Takamura Kōtaro

Takamura

Takamura Kōtarō with his wife Chieko

Statues on Lake Towada

Takamura Kōtarō ( Japanese 高 村 光 太郎 ; born March 13, 1883 in Tokyo ; † April 2, 1956 ibid) was a Japanese sculptor , poet and essayist .

Life

Takamura was trained as a sculptor by his father Takamura Kōun, first in his studio and later at the Tokyo Art School. In 1906 he traveled to the USA, where he met his lifelong friend Ogiwara Rokuzan , later via London to Paris. Here he read the poems of Charles Baudelaire and Émile Verhaerens and became an avid supporter of Auguste Rodin's sculpture .

With the essay Midoriiro no taiyō ( 緑色 の 太陽 , "Green Sun"), which he published after his return to Japan in 1910, he became the first advocate of Impressionism in Japan. In 1914 he married the painter and poet Takamura Chieko . In the same year the collection of poems Dōtei ( 道 程 ) was published. It was the first of six collections of poetry that revolved around his wife Chieko, who showed the first signs of schizophrenia in 1928 and who died ten years later. In 1929 their marriage broke up. A selection of the poems appeared in the Chieko shō collection in 1941 ( 智 恵 子 抄 ).

During the Second World War Takamura was involved in the Patriotic Literary Association and was therefore after 1945 a. a. attacked as a war criminal by the critic Odagiri Hideo . He then retired to northern Japan for several years. In 1950 he published the collection of poems Tenkei ( 典型 ) as a résumé , then the Angu shōden collection ( 暗 小 小 伝 ) consisting of twenty autobiographical poems . After seven years, he returned to Tokyo to create a pair of women in bronze that was erected in 1954 on the shores of Lake Towada in northern Honshu.

In addition to his work as a poet and sculptor, Takamura also emerged as a translator of the writings of Rodin and of poems by Verhaeren, Walt Whitman and others, and as an essayist. Among the essays he first published in English are The Latter Half of Chieko's Life on his wife 's lyrical work and A Last Glance at the Third Ministry of Education Art Exhibition , a sharp reckoning with the modern art world.

In his honor, the Takamura Kōtarō Prize has been awarded since 1958 in the two categories of sculpture and poetry .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bust designed by Takada Hiroatsu .

literature

• Chieko and other Poems of Kōtarō Takamura. Translated into English, with an introduction and notes by Hiroaki Sato . University if Hawai'i Press, 1986, ISBN 0-8248-0689-1 .
• The Chieko Poems. Bilingual edition ja./en. Green Integer, Los Angeles 2007, ISBN 978-1-933382-75-3 .

swell

• Joshua S. Mostow: The Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literature . Columbia University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-231-11314-5 , pp. 150 ff . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
• Shūichi Katō: A Sheep's Song. A Writer's Reminiscences of Japan and the World . University of California Press, 1999, ISBN 0-520-21979-1 , pp. 234 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
• University of Hawaii Press: A Brief History of Imbecility: Poetry and Prose of Takamura Kotaro
• Art fact: Kotaro Takamura

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