更新日：2010年7月5日

Jinzai Kiyoshi

Jinzai Kiyoshi, novelist, translator and critic, was born in Tokyo in 1903. While he was studying Russian at the Tokyo School of Foreign Studies, he began the coterie magazine, Hoki (Broom), with novelists Takeyama Michio and Hori Tatsuo, and contributed his own plays, poems and translations of foreign literature. After graduating, he tried out a series of jobs-at the Hokkaido University library, the Tokyo Denki Nippo paper, and the Soviet trade office-but in 1932, he decided to concentrate on his writing.

He soon became well known for his fine introductions and translations of the works of the French writers Gide and Proust, and those of the Russian writers Pushkin, Turgenev and Chekhov. He also wrote his own novels, among them Tarumi, Hairo no me no onna (Girl with Grey Eyes) and Shonen (Boy). Jinzai had broad tastes, producing historical novels, critiques, verse, plays and translations of foreign literature. He remained a lifelong friend of the poet and novelist, Hori Tatsuo, and showed his understanding of Tatsuo's work by helping to compile his collected works and writing critiques.

Jinzai was also deeply involved in the theater, anxious to create a contemporary theater with a living Japanese language. With the playwrights Kishida Kunio and Fukuda Tsuneari, he found the theater company, Kumo no kai (Clouds). Among his most noted translations are Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, the critical work, Shi to shosetsu no aida (Between Verse and Fiction), and an anthology of poems.

Jinzai Kiyoshi lived in Nikaido from 1934, but later moved to Tokyo to be nearer his work, and then to Saitama during the war. He returned to Kamakura at the end of the war. He died in 1957 at the age of 53