Fire on the Mountaintop: The Life and Work of Santoka Taneda: Japan`s Most Beloved Zen Haiku Poet: Includes a Complete Translation of Diary of the One, Sumita Oyama

Zen priest Santoka Taneda (1882-1940) is one of Japans most beloved modern poets, famous for his free-verse haiku, the dominant style today. This book tells the fascinating story of his life, liberally sprinkled with more than 300 of his poems and extracts from his essays and journals--compiled by his best friend and biographer Oyama Sumita and elegantly translated by William Scott Wilson.

Santoka was a literary prodigy, but a notoriously disorganized human being. By his own admission, he was incapable of doing anything other than wandering on his own two feet and writing his own verses. Although Santoka married and had a son, he devoted his life to poetry, studying Zen, drinking sake and wandering the length and breadth of the Japanese countryside on foot.

The poets life alternated between long periods of solitary retreat and restless travel, influenced by his tragic childhood. When not on the road, he lived in simple grass huts supported by friends and family. Santoka was a lively conversationalist who was often found so drunk he could only make it home with the help of a friendly neighbor or passerby. But above all, throughout his life, he wrote constantly; poetry and essays flowed from him effortlessly.

Santokas eccentric style of haiku is highly regarded in Japan today for being truly modern and free from formal constraints. His journals and essays are equally thought-provoking--the musings of an unkempt but supremely self-conscious mind on everything from writing to cooking rice and his failure to live a more orderly life.