更新日：2010年7月5日

Takahama Kyoshi

Takahama Kyoshi, haiku poet and novelist, was born in 1874 in Ehime Prefecture, Shikoku. His real name was Takahama Kiyoshi.

While at middle school, he was in the same class as Kawahigashi Hekigoto and the two became disciples of the poet Masaoka Shiki. In 1897, the publisher Yanagihara Kyokudo brought out a new haiku magazine, Hototogisu, in Matsuyama, Shikoku, and Shiki became the literary editor, assisted by Kyoshi and Hekigoto. The following year, Kyoshi took over as editor and moved the magazine to Tokyo. He expanded the scope of Hototogisu to include waka poems and prose, so that it became a general literary magazine. This was where Natsume Soseki’s "Wagahai wa Neko de aru" (tr I Am a Cat) was first published and Kyoshi himself contributed stories and novels.

After the Shiki’s death in 1902, Hekigoto began to move towards the "shinkeiko haiku" (new trend haiku), which ignored the traditional meter and seasonal words, while Kyoshi renewed his interest in orthodox haiku. He advocated a strict observance of haiku conventions, and encouraged objective observation and topics based on nature. Kyoshi is said to have written as many as 40,000 to 50,000 haiku in his lifetime, which appeared in anthologies such as "Kyoshi Kushu" and "Gohyaku Ku" (500 haiku). The better known of his fiction are the collection of short stories, "Keito" (Cockscomb) and the novel, "Kaki Futatsu" (tr The Two Persimmons).

As editor of Hototogisu, Kyoshi was instrumental in bringing new writers and poets into the world, among them Mizuhara Shuoshi, Yamaguchi Seishi and Takano Suju. He also encouraged his second daughter Hoshino Tatsuko to publish her own haiku magazine, Tamamo.

Kyoshi moved to Kamakura in 1910 for his children’s health and a fresh start for himself, and lived in Yuigahama for nearly 50 years until his death in 1959 at the age of 85.