Kitamura Tokoku

Kitamura Tōkoku ( Japanese 北 村 透 谷 ; * December 29, 1868 in Odawara , Kanagawa Prefecture , † May 16, 1894 in Minato by suicide ); actually Kitamura Montarō ( 北 村 門 太郎 ) was a Japanese poet and literary critic of the Meiji period who exerted great influence on the writers around Shimazaki Tōson .

Kitamura Tokoku

Life

Kitamura Tōkoku was born on December 29, 1868 in Odawara , Kanagawa Prefecture, to an impoverished samurai family. His real name was Kitamura Montarō. In 1881 he moved to Tōkyō with his parents and graduated from Taimei Elementary School in Ginza the following year . The writer's name Tōkoku is said to go back to the Sukiya Bridge ( 数 寄 屋 橋 , sukiyabashi ), which was located near the school at that time : the characters used to write the name Tōkoku also allow the reading sukiya in Japanese .

In 1883 he attended the Faculty of Political Science of the Technical School in Tōkyō (today's Waseda University ), where he was enrolled until 1886, but which he did not finish. He took part in the movement for freedom and civil rights , but distanced himself from it, disappointed, when fellow campaigners confided in him that they wanted to raise funds for the movement that had stalled through robbery. In 1888, having converted to Christianity, he was baptized in the Sukiyabashi church. In the same year he married Ishizaka Mina ( 石 坂 ミ ナ ).

Kitamura rebelled against the society and literature of his time with his first works. Influenced by Carlyle , Emerson and Wordsworth, he proclaimed an idea of ​​the poet that is not formed through education but rather through subjective experience.

In 1889 he published the Soshū no shi ( 楚 囚 の 詩 ) at his own expense , but immediately regretted this and withdrew the copies. In 1891 he published the verse drama Hōraikyoku ( 蓬莱 曲 , song from the Hōrai summit ) , again at his own expense, and in 1892 published the review Ensei-shika to josei ( 厭世 詩 家 と 女性 , The disgruntled poet and the woman ) in the literary magazine Jogaku zasshi and presented a modern philosophy of love (which to a certain extent corresponded to the principle of "love for love's sake"). The introductory verse

「恋愛 は 人生 の 秘 鑰 な り」

「Ren-ai wa jinsei no hiyaku nari」

"Love is life's secret key"

is said to have amazed Shimazaki Tōson and Kinoshita Naoe , among others . He publishes numerous reviews in the literary magazine Bungakukai , which Kitamura co-founded in 1893 . He established a friendly relationship with the Quaker George Braithwaite, who had come to Japan from England, and through his influence found sympathy for absolute pacifism . He participated in the establishment of the " Japanese Peace Society " ( Nihon-heiwakai ) in 1889 and also contributed to the society's magazine Heiwa ("Peace"). Kitamura also wrote the first Japanese poem in free verse (Shoshū no shi, prisoner's poem ).

On May 16, 1894, Kitamura Tōkoku, 25 years old, committed suicide in Minato's Shiba Park , presumably due to the awakening of nationalism on the eve of the First Sino-Japanese War .

Works

• Ensei-shika to josei ( 厭世 詩 家 と 女性 , 1882 in: Jogaku zasshi )
• Hōraikyoku ( 蓬莱 曲 , published in 1891)
• Naibu-seimei-ron ( 内部 生命 論 , 1893 in: Bungakukai )

literature

• Jürgen Berndt: BI-Lexicon East Asian literatures. Bibliographical Institute Leipzig, 1987, ISBN 3-323-00128-1

Web links

• digitized works including personal details at Aozora Bunko (Japanese)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Katō Shūichi : A history of japanese literature - Vol. 3: The modern years, Tokyo, New York, London, 1990, p. 160 ISBN 4-7700-1547-X
2. ↑ ^{a b} East Asian literatures, p. 188

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