Yamaguchi Seishi

Yamaguchi Seishi

Yamaguchi Seishi ( Jamaguchi Seishi ; Japanese 山口 誓 子 in Kyōto ; born November 3, 1901 ; † March 26, 1994 ), actually Yamaguchi Chikahiko ( 新 新 比 古 ), was a Japanese haiku poet of the Taishō and Shōwa periods .

Life

Yamaguchi Seishi was born as the eldest son of Yamaguchi Shinsuke ( 山口 新 助 ) and his wife Mineko ( 岑 子 ). Since early childhood, however, he was raised by his maternal grandfather, Wakita Kaichi ( 脇 田 嘉 一 ), and lived alternately in Kyōto , Tokyo , Sakhalin , then part of the Japanese administrative area, and again in Kyoto. After attending the First Middle School in Kyoto, he was enrolled in the Third High School . By participating in the local haiku community, he began to write serious haiku.

In 1922 he enrolled in the law school of the Imperial University of Tokyo . There he also took part in the haiku community and was personally instructed by Takahama Kyoshi . In 1926 he finished his studies and worked for Sumitomo KG in Osaka . Two years later, in 1928, he married Asai Umeko ( 浅井 梅子 ), better known under the pseudonym Yamaguchi Hatsujo . At Sumitomo KG, Seishi was mainly responsible for human resources, but because of a lung disease that had plagued him since he was a student, he was given leave in 1940 and finally gave up his work in 1942 when a stay at a health resort did not improve his condition. He then devoted himself to literature.

Already at the beginning of the Shōwa period he was active in the Haiku magazine Hototogisu , published by Takahama Kyoshi , his teacher, and was counted among the "four S" together with Awano Seiho , Mizuhara Shūōshi and Takano Sujū . He often used modern themes and, like Kyoshi, advocated the objective (natural) sketch as a means of representation. In the so-called Shinko-Haiku movement he played one of the leading roles, but he always distinguished himself sharply from haiku without seasonal words. In 1935 he took part as co-editor of the haiku magazine Ashibi and represented, together with Mizuhara Shūōshi and some others, a fixed form of haiku with seasonal words.

In 1948 he founded the magazine Tenrō ( 天狼 , dt. " Sirius ", lit. "Sky Wolf"), which he directed himself, and gathered numerous befriended haikuists and students around him, making an important contribution to the revival of haiku after the war performed. In 1976 he received the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Third Class, in 1987 the Prize of the Art Academy and a year later the Asahi Prize . In 1992 he was publicly recognized for great cultural merits.

As a haikuist, Seishi wrote numerous important works. He donated his library of around 20,000 volumes to the Department of Japanese Studies at Kobe University , for which he was the first to receive an honorary doctorate from the university on June 16, 1988.

Web links

• Side of the Yamaguchi Seishi Museum
• Yamaguchi Seishi - Taka no kuhi

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