This blind Russian musician became a famous writer in Japan

He lost his sight at the age of four, but his keen interest in everything new led him to become a polyglot and travel across half the globe.

Eroshenko was born in 1890 in the Kursk Governorate into a prosperous peasant family. Despite his blindness, he led a typical life: he played with his peers and could easily find his way around the streets of his home village. Recognizing his musical talent, his parents enrolled him in a school run by the ‘Moscow Society for the Care, Upbringing and Education of Blind Children’. There, ten-year-old Vasya learned to play the violin and guitar, devoured books from the local library and began mastering foreign languages.

In 1912, Eroshenko enrolled at the Royal National Institute of Blind People in England; he was able to make the long journey from Russia with the help of like-minded individuals who, like him, were studying Esperanto. Two years later, at the age of 24, Vasily moved to Japan. He not only mastered the Japanese language – adding it to the more than a dozen others he already knew – but also taught Russian, lectured on Russian literature at Waseda University and studied therapeutic practices and psychology. Eroshenko instantly found himself in the spotlight: his stories from distant Russia, most notably ‘The Eagle’s Heart’ and ‘A Burmese legend’, gained great popularity, as did his translations, which included works on the Baháʼí faith. He became a welcome guest at the ‘Nakamura-ya’ circle, a group whose members engaged in discussions on literature, art and politics. His local friends called him a Japanese poet, while Eroshenko himself would later admit that Japan had become as close to him as Russia.

He traveled throughout Southeast Asia – visiting Burma, Siam and India – published books in Esperanto, taught the language at Peking University and in Shanghai and engaged in debates with Rabindranath Tagore regarding Western and Eastern cultures.

In 1924, Eroshenko returned to Soviet Russia, where he worked on translating the writings of Marx and Lenin into Japanese. In Turkmenistan, he established a school for the blind and developed a Braille dictionary for local visually impaired children. It was not until 1952 – shortly before his death – that this tireless Esperantist returned to his birthplace; he passed away in his home village, having continued to work on a new book until his final days.