The surprising thing about Ko Yano's biography of Kenji Miyazawa is not that he's done it in the form of a comic book, but rather that this manga biography appears to be the only book-length life of Miyazawa available in English.

The lack of a substantial non-manga biography of a writer who occupies an important place in the Japanese literary firmament is startling when one considers that there are at least two English-language biographies of Yukio Mishima, a writer much less read, and certainly much less loved, by his countrymen. It's as if there were two biographies of Hubert Selby, Jr. bookstores, but none of Robert Frost.

True, Miyazawa's end was not as dramatic as Mishima's, but their lives seem to have been driven by a similar passion, a zealous desire to know what it would be to live a good life, and to put that knowledge to practical use. Miyazawa's active efforts to live an upright life ensured that his 37 years were full. He was, in his short span (1896-1933), a devout Buddhist, an ardent vegetarian, a gifted teacher, a progressive agronomist, a rural organizer, a poet of note and — this is what he is most loved and remembered for now — a writer of children's stories that have come to be an integral part of growing up Japanese.