YOSANO TEKKAN

(1873–1935)

   Yosano Tekkan, given name Hiroshi, was an author and poet from Kyoto. He graduated from Keio University and taught Japanese language at a women’s school in the provinces. After being fired because of impropriety with a student (with whom he had a child), he went to Tokyo, became interested in Japanese literature, and worked as a staff writer for a newspaper. There he published Bokoku no ne (Sounds Ruinous to the Country, 1894), a critical manifesto calling for tanka reform. The manifesto catapulted his career, and in 1900 he founded the literary journal Myojo (Venus), which drew together a circle of famous poets, such as Kitahara Hakushu, Yoshii Isamu, and Ishikawa Takuboku, who became regular contributors. He met, lived with, and eventually married an early contributor and poet, Yosano Akiko, whose career he subsequently supported at the expense of his own writing.