Not so poor poets: Tanikawa Shuntarō

       In China Daily Mei Jia profiles Japanese poet Tanikawa Shuntarō (谷川 俊太郎), in Prosing the question.
       The piece begins:

Japanese poet Tanikawa Shuntaro has been high on the list as a Nobel Prize in Literature candidate. But he says he'd forgo the honor if it's awarded to him. "I reject the political inclination of the prize and any others of the kind," Tanikawa says.

       Given the money at stake, it can sometimes be hard to believe when authors say they'd turn the prize down -- but Tanikawa is the rare poet who apparently could easily afford to. You see:

Tanikawa wrote the lyrics of the theme song of Miyazaki Hayao's popular animated movie Howl's Moving Castle. He has written anthems for more than 100 Japanese schools, which he describes as challenging because they're specific to the schools' unique environments, histories and features.

In terms of media, he has written poems on Apple applications, under microscopes and on T-shirts.

He lives better than his Chinese contemporaries, earning annual royalties of $800,000 in lean years.

His Chinese translator, Tian Yuan, jokes that Tanikawa is probably the world's wealthiest writer in terms of copyright earnings.

       Several of his works have been translated into English -- including a Selected Poems collection; see the Carcanet publicity page, or get your copy from Amazon.com.