Though published four years after Japan’s defeat, this collection contains many poems describing what Kaneko saw and thought during his travels through Southeast Asia in 1929 and 1931–1932. One section of the book – a book of poems within a book of poems – entitled ‘Nampohshishuh’ (Book of Poems of the South), is dedicated to “those of mixed blood among the Southeast Asian races”. Under European rules for centuries, and with constant influxes of Chinese immigrants, the region had a great many people with mixed blood. (1) Indonesian for ‘cape’ or ‘promontory’.