Night on the Galactic Railroad

“They are all good stories, with a proper beginning, middle, and end, as all good stories should have, and you can enjoy them as much now as you ever will. But under the surface they don’t really belong to any particular country. However long we live, the grass will always grow at our feet and the stars hang over our heads, and standing between them we shall sometimes feel rather frightened. Miyazawa, too, know how it was to be frightened by the world about him, but he managed to love it at the same time, and to love his fellow-creatures as well.” —John Bester

“One of the distinctive features of Kenji's poetical imagination is his fondness for sparkling, limpid, translucent images: a longing for the stars in the night sky, a patch of blue sky glimpsed between clouds, crystal-clear waters that sparkle as they flow gaily downstream.” —Kenji-World.net

“Miyazawa moves you to sorrow, to laugh, chuckle, marvel—he makes you live the things he describes.”
—Hiroaki Sato

“For Miyazawa, what will happen in the future is inextricably part of what is happening now, and what happened in the past. It is all part of ‘the monstrous bright accumulation of time.’ He, living or dead, or you, or me, or anyone else, experiences this fusion of time, congealed into the present moment from which we look forward and back. To be conscious of all time at once is to be enlightened.” —Roger Pulvers

“Kenji Miyazawa fables are international-class.” —David Mitchell

“They are all good stories, with a proper beginning, middle, and end, as all good stories should have, and you can enjoy them as much now as you ever will. But under the surface they don’t really belong to any particular country. However long we live, the grass will always grow at our feet and the stars hang over our heads, and standing between them we shall sometimes feel rather frightened. Miyazawa, too, know how it was to be frightened by the world about him, but he managed to love it at the same time, and to love his fellow-creatures as well.” —John Bester

“One of the distinctive features of Kenji's poetical imagination is his fondness for sparkling, limpid, translucent images: a longing for the stars in the night sky, a patch of blue sky glimpsed between clouds, crystal-clear waters that sparkle as they flow gaily downstream.” —Kenji-World.net

“Miyazawa moves you to sorrow, to laugh, chuckle, marvel—he makes you live the things he describes.”
—Hiroaki Sato

“For Miyazawa, what will happen in the future is inextricably part of what is happening now, and what happened in the past. It is all part of ‘the monstrous bright accumulation of time.’ He, living or dead, or you, or me, or anyone else, experiences this fusion of time, congealed into the present moment from which we look forward and back. To be conscious of all time at once is to be enlightened.” —Roger Pulvers

“Kenji Miyazawa fables are international-class.” —David Mitchell