Unbeaten by Rain: charitable poster to raise money for Japan's new orphans

My friend Yasuko is a Japanese woman living in London. She was haunted and moved by the recent disasters in Japan, and decided to undertake a fundraiser for the people who were hurt and displaced by the tsunami, quake, and nuclear disaster. She translated Miyazawa Kenji's beautiful poem "Unbeaten By Rain" into English, and produced a beautiful poster with a lovely typographic treatment of the poem. She's selling the poster as a fundraiser for £20; all net proceeds go to Ashinaga, a 40-year-old Tokyo nonprofit that provides "education-focused financial and emotional support to children who have a parent/guardian with a serious disability, or who have lost one or both parents/guardians due to illness, accident, disaster, or suicide."

Unbeaten by Rain

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: fundraiser

More at Boing Boing

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Hackers prepare for first "national holiday" in their honor

juepucta

Susan, seems to be kinda like Lennon’s “you may say i’m a dreamer, but i’m not the only one”. Or, in other words, “if the list of things i described makes me a fool, then call me a fool”.

-G.
wookiedingleberry

I’m in too.
The Gunner

It reads like a Japanese “If”. I’m in.
hassenpfeffer

I hate to be a negative Nellie, but the poem reads like the lyrics to Radiohead’s “Fitter Happier.” I understand the impulse behind the poem, but something about its wording kinda creeps me out.

/need more coffee
Susan Oliver

Am I reading it correctly? In the last two stanzas the poem appears to be saying “Being called a fool … Such a person I want to be”.