Arai Takako was born in 1966 in Kiryū City, Gunma Prefecture to a family engaged in textile manufacturing, a traditional industry in Kiryū. Arai is known for writing socially engaged poetry. A frequent theme of her work is the lives of working women and the ways that they have been shaped by contemporary trends, especially the push toward globalization, the recent economic downturn, and the 2011 earthquake-related crises in northeastern Japan.
Jeffrey Angles is a professor of Japanese and translation at Western Michigan University. He is the award-winning translator of dozens of Japan’s most important modern Japanese authors and poets, including Arai Takako. He also writes poetry, mostly in Japanese.
Presented by the Program in Poetry & Poetics, and supported by the Committee on Japanese Studies in the Center for East Asian Studies. The Arts and the Nuclear Age lecture series is supported by the Franke Institute for the Humanities.