Tachihara Michizo
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Tachihara Michizô (立原 道造, July 30, 1914 – March 29, 1939) was a Japanese author.
Tuberculosis cut Michizô down at twenty-four, well before his career could seriously get underway. His verse shimmers with lovely, seemingly transparent natural images and rhythms. It features as well many subtle allusions to ancient and modern verse. These add layers of meaning and nuance difficult to explain.
Michizô seriously wondered how an urban poet could root himself in his tradition and still be "modern." Though a citizen of Tokyo, he only rarely mentioned modern urban scenes. Aside from several references to automobiles or streetcars, Michizô chose to describe a vegetable, not a mineral realm. Trains do appear but mainly as vehicles of escape or fate—they cart people away or they carry him to new experiences that may rescue him from being cooped up in his architectural office.
The natural landscapes of the Shinano Highlands gave birth to an endless parade of conventional imagery: birds, clouds, flowers, grasses, mountains, skies, trees, and wind. Michizô found a princely part of his poetic impulse in figures Western poets now regard as old-fashioned or overused. He used these images to create verse distinguished by a fresh sentimentality and an inner light he hoped would make it "modern."
It didn't bother Michizô to have his work labeled sentimental. He believed that if he wrote forthrightly about his feelings and honestly expressed what was in his heart, his verse would be both uncontaminated and genuine. The uncontested authenticity of his verse surely does transcend artificial classifications like nature poet, romantic poet, or confessional poet.
[edit] Chronology
- 1914 July 30: Born in Tokyo.
- 1918 April: Enters preschool. Hates physical activities, likes drawing.
- 1919 August: Father dies at age 37, no doubt of TB. Second year of preschool.
- 1921 April: Enters elementary school. Teachers regarded him a child prodigy.
- 1923 September: Kantô earthquake destroys home and business.
- 1927 March: Graduates from primary school. April: Enters Third High School and joins the Painting Club, which teaches him to use pastel crayons, the Magazine Club which shows him how to submit manuscripts, etc.
- 1929 March: The Alumni Bulletin prints 11 tanka. October: One of his (pastel?) drawings wins the silver medal in a student exhibition.
- 1930 April: Physical exam shows he’s a beanpole: weighed 99 pounds, chest 31 inches, yet 5' 6.5" tall—then an unusual height for a Japanese teenager.
- 1931 March: Tests out of the fifth year of high school and goes directly to college. Teachers regard him the second most talented student to have attended their school. April: Enters First College and chooses the science route requiring English.
- 1932 April: Joins the Literary Club. June: Shifts from tanka to free verse.
- 1933 Spring: Reads the German poet Rilke as well as French poets Valéry and Baudelaire.
- 1934 March: Graduates from First College. April: Enters the Imperial University, a three-year course of study, as an architecture major.
- 1935 March: Wins the annual prize for the best project or design by an architectural undergraduate. December: Five different literary journals ask him to submit works.
- 1936 March: For the second straight year, wins the undergraduate architectural prize. December: Busy with his graduation project. Urges architects to show a deeper understanding of how human beings and structures interact.
- 1937 March: Graduation project, a design for an artists’ colony, wins his third consecutive architectural prize.
- April Hired by Ishimoto Architects, where he feels cooped up and creatively hemmed in with no control over his conceptions. June: Army draft doctor tells him he’s the skinniest fellow he’d ever examined.
- 1938 March: Working a nine-hour day heightens his exhaustion and sense of oppression. Falls asleep the moment he sits in a comfortable chair. Also suffers a low-grade fever. August: Doctor orders rest, yet Michizô decides on a long trip. September: Leaves for northern Honshu. Stays a month. November: Back in Tokyo. then leaves for Nagasaki.
- Early December: Arrives in Nagasaki exhausted; admitted to the hospital where he coughs up a huge amount of blood. Mid-month: Leaves Nagasaki for Tokyo. Doctors order complete rest. TB had already ravaged every vital organ. Enters Tokyo a sanitarium.
- 1939 Early February: Recovers slightly and his fever abates. Mid-month: His poetry is awarded the first Nakahara Chûya Prize. End of March: He spits bloody phlegm, chokes, and dies—four months short of his twenty-fifth birthday.
[edit] See also
[edit] Sources
- Robert Epp, Though a Prism—Nine Modern Japanese Poets for Young Readers (Forthcoming), pages 133-134 and 145-146.
- Tachihara Michizô (2001). Of Dawn, of Dusk: The Poetry of Tachihara Michizô, trans. Iida Gakuji and Robert Epp, Stanwood, Wash.: Yakusha. ISBN 1-880276-45-3.
