was the pen-name of Ishibashi Teikichi, a Japanese writer and literary critic. As a critic he wrote notable studies of Shishōsetsu as well as of the poet

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (柿本人麻呂 or 柿本人麿; – ) was a Japanese '' waka'' poet and aristocrat of the late Asuka period. He was the most prominent of the poets included in the ''Man'yōshū'', the oldest ''waka'' anthology, but a ...

. He has been referred to as supportive of Shishōsetsu in an orthodox way. He is mainly known as "...the mid to late twentieth century's greatest scholar of 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 (Japanese prosody), on'' (phonetic units similar to syllables) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern, ...

and related literature. He made a particular study of the development of the system of seasonal topics and season words, and single-handedly compiled the most reliable ''haikai saijiki'' (haikai almanacs) and ''kiyose'' (season word guides). They are all still in print today and widely used by

renku , or , is a Japanese form of popular collaborative linked verse poetry. It is a development of the older Japanese poetic tradition of ''ushin'' renga, or orthodox collaborative linked verse. At renku gatherings participating poets take turns provi ...

as well as

poets. (Unlike many such books, Prof. Yamamoto's guides always indicate the parts of the seasons, an important feature for renku poets.) In Japanese scholarly publishing, senior scholars are often called upon as supervising editors over large, complex projects edited by teams of younger scholars. Among other projects, Prof. Yamamoto served in this capacity for the ground-breaking six-volume ''Eigo Saijiki'' / An English & American Literary Calendar (1968-70), which examined our literature through the lens of the Japanese season word system. He was a senior editor on the five-volume ''Nihon Dai Saijiki'' ('Japan Great Saijiki', 1981-83), an encyclopedic, fully color-illustrated work that still sets the standard for such books. He also wrote a five-volume series called ''Yamamoto Kenkichi Haiku Tokuhon'' ('The Kenkichi Yamamoto Haiku Readers'), published posthumously. The individual volumes have titles like 'What is Haiku?', 'A Haiku Commentary Saijiki', 'The Modern Haiku Poets', 'The Heart and Laws of Haikai', and 'The Haiku Environment', each exploring its subject clearly and thoroughly." "While working on the Nihon Dai Saijiki, Prof. Kenkichi Yamamoto selected 500 season words (out of the 16,000 included) as the 'Essential Season Words'. For each of these, he wrote the main entry, describing in detail their origins and histories in the tradition. Later, he collected these same season words for the Kihon Kigo 500-Sen ('The Essential Kigo--500 Selections', 1986), which has become a classic.""Background", in: http://www.2hweb.net/haikai/renku/500ESWd.html This selective list,
The five hundred essential Japanese season words
, translated by

William J. Higginson William J. Higginson (December 17, 1938 – October 11, 2008) was an American poet, translator and author most notable for his work with haiku and renku, born in New York City. He was one of the charter members of the Haiku Society of America, a ...

and Kris Young Kondo (also edited by Higginson, is considered a standard by western haiku researchers and poets.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kenkichi, Yamamoto Japanese literary critics 1907 births 1988 deaths