Forty-Seven Samurai: A Tale of Vengeance & Death in Haiku and Letters - Softcover

Hiroaki Sato is a prolific, award-winning writer of books on Japanese history and literature, and a translator of classical and modern Japanese poetry into English. American poet Gary Snyder has called Sato "perhaps the finest translator of contemporary Japanese poetry into American English."

He is the author of the classic works Legends of the Samurai. and The Sword and the Mind

His reviews and articles have appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times Book Review, AsiaWeek, Mainichi Daily News, St. Andrews Review, Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese, The Journal of American and Canadian Studies, Comparative Literature Studies, The Japan Times, The Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, The Journal of Japanese Studies, Modern Haiku, Japan Focus, and others.

He recently received the 2017-2018 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Translation Prize for Silver Spoon (Stone Bridge Press).

“The vengeance of the Forty-Seven Samurai ended in an early-morning flash of violence and bravado. This book is the scaffolding under that flash. Here are the warring claims to how the incident came to pass; here are contemporary accounts, but also the vivid poems, plays, stories and penal codes that have been revivifying that legend in the centuries since.”

—Forrest Gander, Pulitzer Prize-winning author

"A striking mosaic of original source materials. By creating a Rashōmon Effect with his multi-faceted approach Sato deepens the mysteries of the 47 Rōnin Incident."

—Doris G. Bargen, Author of Suicidal Honor

"Sato enlightens his readers, in English, on Japanese customs and culture relative to the incidents of the 47 Ronin with history, correspondence, and poetry, which may be unknown even to the Japanese people."

—Prof. Allan Sosei Palmer, Urasenke Chanoyu, Kyoto, Boston

“The pre-eminent translator of Japanese poetry in our time...possessed of an unfiltered enthusiasm and spontaneity.”

—August Kleinzahler, London Review of Books

“Over the last four decades, English-speaking aficionados of modern Japanese literature have delighted in the numerous translations, both of prose and poetry, undertaken by the masterful hand of translator, essayist, and poet Hiroaki Sato.”

—Meera Viswanathan