The novella Romaji Diary represents the first instance of a Japanese writer using romaji (roman script) to tell stories in a way that could not betold in kana or kanji. Sad Toys is a collection of 194 Tanka, the traditional 31- syllable poems that are evocative of Japan's misty past and its tentative steps into the wider world.
“Poetry must be an exact report, an honest diary, of the changes in a man’s emotional life, “ writes Takuboku Ishikawa. This important volume presents an intimate portrait, in diary and poetry, of a distrubed artist engaged in a fight against tuberculosis and against his very self. Ishikawa speaks his heart with almost brutal candor. His battle, as recorded here, dramatically parallels Japan’s struggle against itself during the radical cultural change of the Meiji era.