Rin Ishigaki's notebooks: Diaries from 1957 to 1998

I don’t believe that you, with your beautiful voice and gentle round face,
were hiding anything.
Because in your poetry, you were frighteningly honest. ── Shuntaro Tanikawa

Rin Ishigaki, along with Noriko Ibaragi, was a pioneering female poet in post-war Japan. This book is a unique diary collection, featuring color photocopies of the diaries she kept in her company notebook at the Industrial Bank of Japan. It details what time she woke up, where she went, who she met, and what she bought. Through excerpts from her daily life between the ages of 37 and 78, meticulously written in a beautiful cursive script with a pencil, one can glimpse the background that gave birth to her poetry, known as "social poetry" and "life poetry." The book opens with words from her close friend Shuntaro Tanikawa, who passed away before its publication, and concludes with essays about Rin Ishigaki by essayist Yoko Seki and poet Junko Takahashi. The binding, designed to mimic the size of a notebook, fits comfortably in the hand. This is a highly valuable, archival-quality collection of her handwritten diaries.