Kume Masao

Kume Masao ( Japanese 久 米 正雄 ; born November 23, 1891 in Ueda , Nagano Prefecture , † March 1, 1952 in Kamakura ) was a Japanese writer.

Kume Masao

Life

Kume's father was the director of the Seimei School, the municipal elementary school in Ueda. He died by suicide and wanted to take responsibility for the fact that the image of Tennō and his wife burned in a fire in the school of which he was the director. Kume then grew up in his mother's homeland, in Kōriyama in Fukushima Prefecture . As a student at the Imperial University of Tokyo , where he studied English literature, he published the third edition of the literary journal Shinshicho ( 新 思潮 ) together with Naruse Seiichi (1892-1936) and Matsuoka Yuzuru (1891-1969) . In 1914 he wrote the play Gyūnyūya no kyōdai( 牛乳 屋 の 兄弟 , roughly: The siblings of the dairy business ). From 1915 he was together with Akutagawa a student of Natsume Sōseki . He published short stories and the play Abukuma Shinjū ( 阿 武 隈 心中 ). Around this time he had a relationship with the writer Yuriko Miyamoto . The following year, 1916, he published the fourth edition of Shinshichō with Akutagawa Ryūnosuke and Kikuchi Kan . He went in and out of the Sōseki house. After Sōseki's unexpected death in late 1916, Kume Sōseki's widow Kyōko asked to marry her eldest daughter. Thereupon a diatribe reached Sōseki's house, in which Kume was defamed as an impotent Filou. Ultimately, Sōseki's daughter married the man she fell in love with, Matsuoka Yuzuru.

Kume went to Tokyo disappointed and published entertainment novels with Kikuchi Kan. He also devoted himself increasingly to the theater and founded the Kokumin Bungeikai ( 国民 文 芸 会 ) with Osanai Kaoru and Kubota Mantarō in 1918 . In 1923 he married his wife Tsuyako. He also wrote literary reviews and translated works by European writers, such as Shakespeare's Hamlet , Romeo and Juliet, as well as works by Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas . As a haiku poet, he was a student of Kawahigashi Hekigotō and published several volumes of poetry under the name Santei ( 三 汀 ). From 1925 until his death he lived in Kamakura . In 1929 he toured Europe for a year. In 1933 he ventured into politics and stood for election as mayor of Kamakuras and successor to Tanzan Ishibashi . It remained with a foray into politics, since he was arrested in the same year along with Matsutarō Kawaguchi and Ton Satomi for illegal card games. From 1938 he worked as a department head of the later Mainichi Shinbun in Tokyo.

He died of a stroke in 1952 at the age of 60.

Works

My father's death

The story portrays his father's suicide from the perspective of eight-year-old Tatsuo. The story clearly bears autobiographical traits from Kume's life. It begins with a look back at a beautiful and at the same time unusual for Tatsuo spring day, two days before the suicide. The world seems to be all right that day, except that Tatsuo had a stomach ache on the way home to school. His father, whom he meets on the doorstep, realizes the situation and shows solidarity with his son. While Tatsuo is resting in his room, it seems to the unsuspecting person as if a monster was sitting in a dark corner of the room, casting a frightening shadow of death on him. The notion that his father might die creeps up on him. He prays and pragmatically considers the consequences that the death of the father, who is the principal of the local school, could have on his reputation and life. Tatsuo considers the death of his sister with lung disease to be predetermined, but the unexpected death, which suddenly breaks in, scares him.

Noise and ringing bells wake Tatsuo at midnight. His father's school is on fire. He and his brother watched the exciting and unusual event from afar. The next morning he runs excitedly to the remains of the school. He learns that the fire started due to the neglect of the school clerk and that the images of Tennō and his imperial wife were burned. The spectators who gather see the school principal's responsibility. Tatsuo's father, visibly saddened, hurries past him home, where he retires to his study and forbids his family to enter. “The following day my father died by his own hand. What one half feared, but also thought impossible, had now happened. ”Tatsuo's sister discovers the suicide that his father had carried out according to the rules of seppuku in order to take responsibility for the loss of the portraits. "When death was announced from door to door, all the people talked under the lamp in the evening about the heroic death of my father without knowing why his death should be praised." The burial of the Father held. Tatsuo remains with a feeling of sadness and grandeur while a strange, elegantly dressed gentleman speaks to him: "Be the father's son!"

• Chichi no Shi ( 父 の 死 )
  • "The death of my father", translated by Kakuji Watanabe. In: Japanese Masters of the Story , Walter Dorn Verlag, Bremen, 1960, pp. 57–70.

• Abukuma Shinju , acting
• Hotarugusa ( 螢 草 )
• Rabbits ( 破船 )
• Bosan ( 墓 参 )
• Gyūnyūya no Kyōdai ( 牛乳 屋 の 兄弟 ), acting
• Maki Uta ( 牧 唄 ), haikus
• Kaeribana ( 返 り 花 ), haikus

Web links

• Digital copies of his works at Aozora Bunko (Japanese)
• Britannica Online Encyclopedia
• Kamakura City, Kamakura´s Literary Figures - Biography

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