Tokutomi Roka

Tokutomi Roka

Tokutomi Roka ( Japanese 徳 冨 蘆花 ; * October 25, 1868 in Minamata ; † September 18, 1927 ), actually Tokutomi Kenjirō ( 徳 冨 健 次郎 ), was a Japanese writer of the Meiji and Taishō periods .

Life

Tokutomi Roka was born on October 25, 1868, the second son of the scholar and land samurai Tokutomi Kazutaka , a disciple of Yokoi Shonan , in Minamata , Kumamoto Prefecture. His older brother was the thinker, historian and journalist Tokutomi Sohō .

As a teenager he attended the Kyoto Dōshisha School (the forerunner of today's Dōshisha University ) and was baptized during a temporary return to Kumamoto. He later continued attending the Dōshisha school, but then went to Tōkyō, being reprimanded for having affection for Niijima Jō's niece . There he took part in the Min'yūsha publishing house run by his brother and wrote articles for the club newspapers Kokumin no Tomo and Kokumin Shimbun . With his novel Hototogisu ( 不如 帰 , dt. " Gackelkuckuck ") he became known overnight.

When his brother Sohō shifted his ideological point of view from the liberal-democratic to the nationalist wing on the occasion of the Sino-Japanese War , Roka ended his work at Min'yūsha-Verlag in 1903. He published Kuroshio ( 黒 潮 ) at his own expense , which he began with the section Kokubetsu no ji ( 告別 の 辞 , "farewell speech"), in which he announced his separation from his brother.

He later fainted while climbing Mount Fujisan and, as he wrote, experienced a "rebirth" during the recovery process. He went on a pilgrimage to Palestine and visited Tolstoy . After that he worked as a sideline farmer and came more and more to idiosyncratic religious convictions.

Works

• Hototogisu ( 不如 帰 , German " Gackelkuckuck ").
• Kaijin ( 灰燼 , German "rubble and ashes").
• Kuroi me to chairo no me ( 黒 い 目 と 茶色 の 目 , German "black eyes and brown eyes").
• Omoide no ki ( 思 出 の 記 , dt. "Memoirs").
• Shizen to jinsei ( 自然 と 人生 , dt. "Nature and life").
• Kuroshio ( 黒 潮 , German "Black Current", " Kuroshio ").
• Yadorigi ( 寄生 木 , German "mistletoe").
• Mimizu no tawakoto ( み み ず の た は こ と , German "Stupid earthworm talk").

literature

• Laurence Kominz: Pilgrimage to Tolstoy: Tokutomi Roka's Junrei Kikō . In: Monumenta Nipponica , vol. 41, no. 1, 1986, ISSN  0027-0741 pp. 51-101.
• Ken K. Ito: The Family and the Nation in Tokutomi Roka's Hototogisu . In: Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies , Vol. 60, No. 2, 2000, ISSN  0073-0548 pp. 489-536.
• Gromkovskaja, Lidija L .; Raff, Peter [ex.]; Tokutomi Roka: the hermit of Kasuya; Munich 2019 (iudicium); ISBN 9783862051281
• A detailed short biography contains the foreword by the translator in: Tokutomi Kenjirō: Footprints in the Snow . (English translation of Omoide no ki by Kenneth Strong), London, George Allen and Unwin 1970, pp. 9-46.
• Ekkehard May: Nature and Human Life . Dieterich'sche Verlagbuchhandlung, Mainz 2008.
• Tokutomi Roka & Ekkehard May (translator): Nature and human life . Dieterich'sche Verlagbuchhandlung, Mainz 2008.
• Lisette Gebhardt: How he felt what he was reading: a Russian approach to the Japanese writer Tokutomi Roka . In: literary criticism, No. 1, 2020 .

Web links

Commons : Tokutomi Roka  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Digitized works and personal information at Aozora Bunko

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Tokutomi is the family name, Roka the first name.