Poachers: Charms of the Green World

Kotaro Samukawa was born in Hokkaido in 1908, and in 1921, together with his family, he ended up in Sakhalin. However, in his new place of residence, the future writer lived for only a little more than a year. He returned to Sakhalin again only in 1932. At that time, his father worked at a museum in Toyohara (now Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk). At the age of 24, Samukawa began helping his father: he made sketches of plants and prepared scientific articles for publication. Together with his father, he prepared more than 30,000 illustrations for books about Sakhalin plants, and later became an editor of his father’s four-volume work, “Flora of Sakhalin.” While working as an editor, Samukawa also took his first steps in fiction—publishing the story “Poachers,” in which he tells about a brave hunter known by the nickname Bars. In 1939, for the story “Poachers,” Kotaro Samukawa received the prestigious Akutagawa Prize.

This collection includes, besides “Poachers,” an audio version of the story “Enchantment of the Green World.”