Shuntaro Tanikawa, who pioneered modern Japanese poetry, poignant but conversational in its divergence from haiku and other traditions, has died aged 92. Tanikawa, who translated the Peanuts comic strip and penned the lyrics for the theme song of the animation series Astro Boy, died on 13 November, his son Kensaku Tanikawa said on Tuesday. The cause of death, at a Tokyo hospital, was old age. Tanikawa stunned the literary world with his 1952 debut work Two Billion Light Years of Solitude, a bold look at the cosmic in daily life, sensual, vivid but simple in its use of everyday language.
