My Deepest Desire
Writing by Tamiki Hara; Art by Sandy Walker
A new translation of Japanese poet Tamiki Hara’s final work accompanied by full page ink drawings of American artist Sandy Walker. Hara’s writing offers surprising articulation of the feelings that affected this revered writer who lived through both the loss of his beloved wife and the bombing of Hiroshima.
Published by New Village Press
Distributed by NYU Press
Publication date: April 14, 2026
Pages: 44
Trim: 7 x 10 in
Images: 16 black & white ink drawings
ISBN: 978-1-61332-295-6
Price: $20.00
Primary edition: paperback
Also available in hardcover and ebook
Language: English and Japanese
About Tamiki Hara (原民喜 Hara Tamiki) (1905–1951)
Tamiki Hara was a Japanese writer and poet. Born in Hiroshima, he lived through the atomic bombing in 1945. In the years preceding his death, Tamiki Hara wrote about the destruction he witnessed in autobiographical short stories and poems, making him a known figure in the atomic bomb literature genre.
About Sandy Walker
Artist Sandy Walker is a painter, printmaker and visual artist. He is the recipient of the prestigious Isadora Duncan Dance Award for Visual Design, and his work is in the collections of many museums, including
the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum in New York.
“The depth of Tamiki Hara’s heart is so exquisitely expressed that I was brought to a state of wonder and awe. His quietly inventive meditations, memories and dreams are a true gift from the poet who, despite the personal and global tragedy he endured, still could say, ‘I want to live as innocent as a bird until the moment death snatches me up.” The combined boldness and sensitivity of Sandy Walker’s ink drawings dance across the imagination, startling in their nakedness—a perfect accompaniment to Liza Dalby’s pristine translation of Hara’s final work.”
—Peter Levitt, author of Fingerpainting on the Moon: Writing and Creativity as a Path to Freedom
“The troubled, dreamlike world of atomic bomb survivor Tamiki Hara is vividly and gently recreated here in Liza Dalby’s new translation.”
—Hiroaki Sato, writer and translator of over forty works of classical and modern Japanese
“It is so very moving to see the black ink brush gently against Hara’s last words, seep into them, echo them, explode from deep inside them. Poet and painter are like one. A survivor of the atomic bomb, Hara feels darkness and shadows left on walls but thinks of writing ‘a paean to snow,’ of light filtering through trees, of ‘hot tears’ from a single star, of Kanda bookstores and just sitting in cafes. On the edge of the railroad tracks, longing for lost loved ones, he catches the train’s energy. Finally, he follows a lark ascending into a meteoric streak of light.”
—Doris Bargen, Professor Emeritus of Japanese Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst