HAGIWARA SAKUTARO

Hagiwara Sakutaro was a free verse poet, essayist, and literary critic from Gunma Prefecture. He was interested in poetry at an early age and published tanka verses in the journal Myojo (Venus) in his teens. He enrolled in two universities, but dropped out of both after a combined five semesters. In 1913, Hagiwara published five tanka poems in a journal edited by Kitahara Hakushu, and Kitahara became Hagiwara’s mentor. The following year he joined Muro Saisei and Christian minister Yamamura Bocho (1884–1924) in creating a literary journal Takujo Funsui (Tabletop Fountain). He later published controversial poetry anthologies, including his modernist collection Aoneko (1923; tr. Blue Cat, 1978), and wrote literary criticism focusing on Japanese poetry.