Kitamura Tokoku


Kitamura Tōkoku was the pen name of Kitamura Montarō, a Japanese poet, essayist, and one of the founders of the modern Japanese romantic literary movement in the late Meiji period of Japan.

Early life

From a samurai-class family of Ashigarashimo District, Kanagawa, Kitamura was interested in liberal politics at an early age, and played a minor role in the Freedom and People's Rights Movement. He attended the Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō, but was expelled due to his radical political views. After almost a year of vigorous political activities, which occasionally involved robbery to raise funds, he started questioning the purpose of the movement and left to become a writer. He was also baptized as a Christian in 1888.

Literary career

Kitamura married Ishizaka Mina at the age of 19 in 1888, and in the same year he self-published the long verse Soshū no shi, which was the longest Japanese poem written in free verse up until that time. He followed this with the poetic drama Hōrai kyoku. He claimed to be influenced by the works of Byron, Emerson and Carlyle; his wife's Christianity also greatly influenced his outlook.
Kitamura turned from poetry to essays, and wrote works extolling the "life-espousing views" of the West, over the "life-denying view" of Buddhism and traditional Japanese Shinto thought. His attempts to explore the nature of the self and the potential for the individual, particularly in his seminal work Naibu seimei ron, are regarded by some as the starting point of modern Japanese literature. Kitamura was also drawn to the Quaker movement, and founded a pacifist society, the Japan Peace Association, in 1889.
He was a close associate of Shimazaki Tōson, whom he strongly influenced towards the romantic literary movement.
Kitamura was hired as an English teacher at the Friends Girls School in 1890. He frequented the Azabu Christian Church. In 1893, he took over the post held by Shimazaki Tōson at Meiji Girls School. He also submitted literary criticism to the literary magazine Bungakukai, which he helped launch with Shimazaki Tōson in 1893. Around this time he began to show signs of mental instability and depression.
Before dawn on 16 May 1894, Tokoku hanged himself in his garden at his home near Shiba Park in Tokyo. His grave is at the temple of Zuisho-ji in Shirokane, Tokyo.