更新日：2010年7月5日

Kambara Ariake

Kambara Ariake, poet, was born in Tokyo in 1876. His real name was Kambara Hayao.

While still at middle school, he became fond of Byron and Heine, and began writing poetry himself. After graduating from Kokumin Eigakkai in 1894, he started a coterie magazine Ochibo Zoshi (Gleaners’ notes) with fellow writers, Hayashida Shuncho and Yamagishi Kayo, in which he presented his first novel, AKI NO YAMAZATO (Mountain village in autumn). In 1898, his second novel DAIJIHI (Great mercy) won a prize in the Yomiuri Shimbun literary contest, bringing him to the attention of one of the judges, Ozaki Koyo, an influential novelist and poet. But soon after this, Ariake gave up prose and decided to concentrate on verse.

While influenced by British poets such as Keats and Dante Gabriel Rosetti, he borrowed themes from the old chronicles KOJIKI (Japan’s ancient history) and FUDOKI (Topography of ancient Japan) to create the many excellent poems that went into his first collection, KUSAWAKABA (Fresh leaves), published in 1902. In his fourth anthology, ARIAKE SHU (Ariake’s collection), he introduced the 14-line sonnet to the conventional Japanese literary style, and was recognized as a leading figure in Japanese symbolist poetry, alongside Susukida Kyukin. In the meantime, a move towards freestyle verse was gaining momentum, but Ariake could not sympathize with the new trend and gradually withdrew from literary circles. He died in 1952 at the age of 76.

Ariake started living in Kamakura in 1919, first at Yukinoshita and then at Yakushido ga yatsu, Nikaido. He was forced to move to Shizuoka after suffering damage in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, but returned to Nikaido in 1945, where he lived for the rest of his life.