Kawabata Bōsha (川端茅舎; August 17, 1897 – ) was a Japanese ''

haiku is a type of short form poetry originally from Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases that contain a ''kireji'', or "cutting word", 17 '' on'' (phonetic units similar to syllables) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern, and a ''kigo'', or se ...

'' poet.

Life

Kawabata Bōsha was born on August 17, 1897, in

Nihonbashi is a business district of Chūō, Tokyo, Japan which grew up around the bridge of the same name which has linked two sides of the Nihonbashi River at this site since the 17th century. The first wooden bridge was completed in 1603. The current ...

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

. He was the son of an amateur ''haiku'' poet, painter, and calligrapher, and the younger brother or half-brother of the painter

Kawabata Ryūshi was the pseudonym of a Japanese painter in the ''Nihonga'' style, active during the Taishō and Shōwa eras. His real name was Kawabata Shotarō. Biography He was born in Wakayama city in Wakayama Prefecture. He moved to Tokyo in 1895. I ...

. His parents ran a

geisha house {{Culture of Japan, Traditions, Geisha {{nihongo, Geisha, 芸者 ({{IPAc-en, ˈ, ɡ, eɪ, ʃ, ə; {{IPA-ja, ɡeːɕa, lang), also known as {{nihongo, , 芸子, geiko (in Kyoto and Kanazawa) or {{nihongo, , 芸妓, geigi, are a class of female ...

when he was a child, prompting Kawabata to develop puritanical and reclusive tendencies. When his family home was destroyed in the

1923 Great Kantō earthquake The struck the Kantō Plain on the main Japanese island of Honshū at 11:58:44 JST (02:58:44 UTC) on Saturday, September 1, 1923. Varied accounts indicate the duration of the earthquake was between four and ten minutes. Extensive firestorms an ...

, Kawabata took up residence in the

Tōfuku-ji is a Buddhist temple in Higashiyama-ku in Kyoto, Japan. Tōfuku-ji takes its name from two temples in Nara, Tōdai-ji and Kōfuku-ji.Japan ReferenceTōfuku-ji/ref> It is one of the Kyoto ''Gozan'' or "five great Zen temples of Kyoto". Its ...

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...

, where he studied

Zen Buddhism Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...

for four years. He also studied painting under Kishida Ryūsei until the latter's death in 1929. He eventually gave up both Buddhism and painting due to illness. In 1931 he developed tuberculosis of the spine and was bedridden for the remainder of his life. Kawabata Bōsha died on 17 July 1941.

Poetry

Kawabata began publishing ''haiku'' in magazines while he was still a teenager. In 1915, he was first published in '' Hototogisu'' ("Cuckoo"), the magazine of the ''haiku'' school centered on

Kyoshi Takahama was a Japanese poet active during the Shōwa period of Japan. His real name was ; Kyoshi was a pen name given to him by his mentor, Masaoka Shiki. Early life Kyoshi was born in what is now the city of Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture; his father, Ike ...

, a conservative movement focused on the natural world. While many adherents later broke with Kyoshi, Kawabata's devotion to the ''Hototogisu'' school's principles was such that one critic labeled him a "martyr" to "flowers and birds." (In 1929, ''Hototogisu'' published Kyoshi's famous dictum that the subject matter of ''haiku'' was "flowers and birds.") Kawabata's work was also noted for its use of

onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', ''m ...

and its religious imagery, both Buddhist and Christian. In 1934, he published his first collection of poetry, ''Kawabata Bōsha Kushū.'' It began with 26 ''haiku'' about

dew Dew is water in the form of droplets that appears on thin, exposed objects in the morning or evening due to condensation. As the exposed surface cools by radiating its heat, atmospheric moisture condenses at a rate greater than that at whi ...

, whose transitory nature was a particular focus of Kawabata's work. His second collection, ''Kegon,'' featured an introduction by Kyoshi, where he praised Kawabata as the leading figure "in the mysteries of nature poetry." ''The Haiku of Kawabata Bōsha, a Definitive Edition'' was published posthumously in 1946.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kawabata, Bosha Created via preloaddraft 1897 births 1941 deaths Writers from Tokyo 20th-century Japanese poets Japanese haiku poets