更新日：2010年7月5日

Hoshino Tatsuko

Hoshino Tatsuko, haiku poet, was born in 1903, as the second daughter of the poet and novelist Takahama Kyoshi. After her marriage, she was encouraged by her father to start writing haiku and soon showed an amazing talent for this type of verse.

In 1930, she founded a haiku magazine exclusively for women, Tamamo. Two years later, she joined the literary coterie Hototogisu and soon shared the position of leading female haiku poet with Nakamura Teijo. The two were later joined by Hashimoto Takako and Mitsuhashi Takajo, to become the "4 Ts," and firmly established the influence of women on this genre. In 1937 Tatsuko brought out her first anthology of haiku, which was followed by other volumes including "Kamakura," "Sasame" and "Jitsui."

Tatsuko followed her father’s insistence on "kacho-fuei"-objective observation-and her verses reflect her love of nature and a soft, feminine approach to daily life. Kyoshi was said to have been especially proud of his daughter’s natural talent to express her thoughts exactly as she perceived them. After her father’s death, Tatsuko became a haiku selector for the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, and contributed widely to haiku columns in newspapers and magazines and worked assiduously to nurture the next generation of poets. Besides haiku, she also published works like "Tamamo haiwa" (Stories of the Tamamo group) and "Yamato Seki-Butsu" (stone buddhas of Yamato). She died in 1984 at the age of 80.

Tatsuko began living in Kamakura in 1911 and following a short period in Tokyo, she returned to Kamakura in 1931, believing it to be an ideal place to bring up her children. She made her home in Yuigahama and later Sasame. Her ashes are buried at Jufukuji Temple.