Yamada Bimyo

Yamada Bimyo

Yamada Bimyō ( Japanese 山田 美妙 , born August 25, 1868 in the district of Kanda , Edo , today Chiyoda , Tokyo Prefecture ; † October 24, 1910 ) was a Japanese writer, poet and literary critic. His real name was Yamada Taketarō ( 山田 武太郎 ). He is considered to be the pioneer of the "poetry of the new style" ( 新 体 詩 , Shintaishi ), which began to develop under Western influence in the Meiji period . The writer Kanō Ichirō (* 1928) is Yamada's grandson. His paternal grandfather was the poet Sakuramoto Yoshikaze .

Life

"Butterfly"

Yamada was born in 1868 as the eldest son of Yamada Kichio , a feudal man of the Nambu clan , and grew up with his maternal grandmother. In 1884 he first attended a preparatory school for university admission. During this time he founded the literary group Ken'yūsha ( 硯 友 社 , literally: "Friends of the ink pen") with Ishibashi Shian (1867-1927), Ozaki Kōyō and Maruoka Kyūka (1865-1927 ) and with them gave the literary magazine Garakuta Bunko ( 我 楽 多 文庫 , for example: "odds and ends library"). Until the Meiji period, the literary language ( bungo ) and the spoken language differed in grammar and vocabulary. The “alignment of the written to the spoken language” ( 言文一致 , genbun itchi ) associated with the “poetry of the new style” was first exemplified by Yamada in his novel Azakai Shōsetsu Tengu ( 嘲 戒 小説 天狗 ), which appeared in the Karakuta Bunko in front. In 1887, with the historical novel Musashino, a new-style newspaper novel appeared for the first time in the major daily newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun . At the age of 20, Yamada had already achieved as much recognition as Tsubouchi Shoyo, who was nine years older . So excited in 1889 the publication of his writing Kachō ( 蝴蝶 , about: butterfly), which revolves in sexual episodes around the main character of the same name, in the magazine "Freund der Nation" ( 国民 之 友 , Kokumin no tomo ) because of the topic and the fact that it was decorated with an illustration of a naked body caused quite a stir.

In 1890 Yamada started working for Kaishin newspaper publisher. Five years later in 1895 he married his student Tawada Iwabune (1874-1896) and published the joint work Mine no sangetsu ( 峯 の 残月 ) with Iwabune in the literary magazine Bungei Club ( 文 芸 倶 楽 部 ). However, the connection between the two was short-lived. In March 1896, the marriage was annulled due to the poor relationship between Iwabune and Yamada's grandmother. Iwabune returned to her hometown of Tsuruoka and died after attempting suicide in September at the age of only 23, while Yamada and Kane Saidō? ( 西 戸 カ ネ ) had married again. As if that wasn't enough, in 1894 a woman who worked in a tea shop in Asakusa gave birth to a child who was not on the family register. Because of this misconduct, he was reprimanded in daily newspapers such as the Mainichi Shimbun , as well as in literary magazines. In this way he lost his popularity, withdrew from literary life and died lonely and impoverished in 1910 at the age of 42. His grave is in Somei Cemetery in Tokyo.

Works (selection)

• 1886 Shintai shisen ( 新 体 詩選 ), poetry anthology
• 1887 Musashino ( 武 蔵 野 )
• 1902 Josō no tantei ( 女装 の 探 偵 )
• 1903 Chi no namida ( 地 の 涙 )
• 1903 Shōsetsu hane neke tori ( 小説 ・ 羽 ぬ け 鳥 )
• 1903 Sabigatana ( さ び が た な )

Web links

• Digital copies of his works at Aozora Bunko (Japanese)
• Digital copies of his works at Kindai Digital Library (Japanese)

annotation

1. ↑ Illustration: Watanabe Seitei (1852–1918).
2. ↑ Not that there had not been pictures of naked bodies before, but booklets with such pictures were not publicly traded in the Edo period, but rather under the counter.

Individual evidence

Commons : Yamada Bimyō  - collection of images, videos and audio files

1. ↑ 山田 美妙 . In: デ ジ タ ル 版 日本人 名 大 辞典 + Plus at kotobank.jp. Retrieved March 14, 2014 (Japanese). 
2. ↑ 第 67 回 ： 山田 美妙 . City of Morioka, December 14, 2011; archived from the original on December 13, 2013 ; Retrieved March 15, 2014 (Japanese). 
3. ↑ Jim Reichert: Yamada Bimyo: Historical Fiction and modern love . In: In the Company of Men . Stanford University Press, Stanford 2006, pp. 99–133 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed March 15, 2014]).
4. ↑ Warrick L. Barrett: Bimyo "Shakespeare of the East" Yamada. Find a grave, January 12, 2003, accessed March 15, 2014 . 

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