Ogiwara Seisensui

Ogiwara Seisensui ( Japanese 荻 原 井泉 水 ; born June 16, 1884 in Shimmei, Shiba district (today: Hamamatsu, Minato district ), Tōkyō ; † May 20, 1976 in Kamakura ) was a Japanese haikuist . His real name was Kitarō ( 幾 太郎 ), later he was called Tōkichi ( 藤 吉 ).

Life

Ogiwara Seisensui was born the second son of a general store in Shimmei. The Ogiwara family came from Takada in the old province of Echigo (today part of the city of Jōetsu , Niigata prefecture ), where the grandfather, Tōkichi , is said to have left the house due to family circumstances and went to Edo .

Seisensui attended Azabu Middle School and began to write haiku during this time . He also attended Seisoku Middle School and First High School and graduated in 1908 from the Department of Linguistics at the Imperial University of Tōkyō .

In 1911 he took over the editing of the “new haiku” dedicated magazine Sōun ( 層雲 , dt. “Layered Clouds”), in which Kawahigashi Hekigotō also participated. In the same year he married his wife Keiko ( 桂子 ).

In 1912 he gave the Haiku collection Shizen no tobira ( 自然 の 扉 , dt. "Nature's Gate"), the first collection of "free haiku" published by the Sōun magazine. In 1913 he declared the unnecessary use of seasonal words , traditionally an essential feature of a haiku, whereupon Hekigotō, who did not agree, left the magazine. Instead, Ozaki Hōsai and Taneda Santōka , only one class under Seisensui at high school, joined the Sōun at that time. But there was no real conversation with Seisensui.

In 1923 his wife Keiko and his mother died, after which Seisensui moved to Kyoto . In 1929 he married again, this time Hisako ( 寿 子 ) and the following year the first son, Kaiichi ( 海 一 ), was born. In the same year, Seisensui visited the area around Saku City , Nagano Prefecture and stayed at a hotel in Saku, where he left works. A Waka memorial stone in the hotel reminds of this.

In 1965 he became a member of the Japanese Academy of Arts ( 日本 芸 術 院 , Nihon-geijutsuin ). Ogiwara Seisensui died on May 20, 1976 at the age of 91.

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