Zenmaro Toki (土岐善麿 ''Toki Zenmaro''; June 8, 1885 – April 15, 1980) was a Japanese

Naturalist Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...

tanka is a genre of classical Japanese poetry and one of the major genres of Japanese literature. Etymology Originally, in the time of the influential poetry anthology (latter half of the eighth century AD), the term ''tanka'' was used to disti ...

'' poet. After initially taking up ''tanka'' in his teens, he studied under Kun'en Kaneko, and when in attendance at

Waseda University Waseda University (Japanese: ), abbreviated as or , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the Tōkyō Professional School by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the fifth Prime Minister of Japan, prime ministe ...

he socialized with other notable Naturalist poets such as

Bokusui Wakayama was the pen-name of , a Japanese author noted for his poetry in pre-World War II Japan. Life Wakayama was born in Togo, Miyazaki, (now part of the city of Hyūga, Miyazaki, Hyūga) as the eldest son of a doctor. He became interested in poetry f ...

. Later, he earned the respect of the famous poet

Takuboku Ishikawa was a Japanese poet. Well known as both a tanka and or poet, he began as a member of the Myōjō group of naturalist poets but later joined the "socialistic" group of Japanese poets and renounced naturalism. He died of tuberculosis. Major ...

, with whom he corresponded until the latter's death in 1912.

Biography

Zenmaro Toki was born in 1885. He was born in

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

. He first took up ''

'' composition in middle school. He became a disciple of , a minor poet who had studied under

Ochiai Naobumi was a Japanese tanka poet and scholar of Japanese literature of the Meiji Era. He was born as Ayukai Morimitsu and was the biological elder brother of the Korean scholar Ayukai Fusanoshin. Biography Ochiai was born in what was then Motoyoshi C ...

and who, according to historian and critic

Donald Keene Donald Lawrence Keene (June 18, 1922 – February 24, 2019) was an American-born Japanese scholar, historian, teacher, writer and translator of Japanese literature. Keene was University Professor emeritus and Shincho Professor Emeritus of Japane ...

, never fulfilled his early potential. Kun'en experimented with just about every ''tanka'' school, and the characteristic that critics have traditionally associated with him is his having been a "city poet". This was likely a characteristic that attracted Zenmaro to him, as the two shared little else in common. Zenmaro attended

, where he fraternized with

and other poets. He also studied

European literature Western literature, also known as European literature, is the literature written in the context of Western culture in the languages of Europe, and is shaped by the periods in which they were conceived, with each period containing prominent weste ...

extensively. Upon graduation, he found work as a journalist. His talent as a poet first garnered attention in 1910 when he published ''Nakiwarai'' ("Smiling Through the Tears"), a collection of 143 poems written entirely in

roman letters The Latin script, also known as the Roman script, is a writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae in Magna Graecia. The Gree ...

, in three-line stanzas.

praised this work as being unlike that of any other ''tanka'' poet of the day; although the poems were written in

classical Japanese The , also called and sometimes simply called "Medieval Japanese", is the literary form of the Japanese language that was the standard until the early Shōwa period (1926–1989). It is based on Early Middle Japanese, the language as spoken d ...

, their subject-matter was drawn from everyday life in a manner typical of the

poets. The three-line form Zenmaro's collection pioneered was soon thereafter adopted by Takuboku. He adopted mild

socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

tendencies in the 1910s, and when, in the 1930s, the militarist government began to crack down heavily on left-wing literature, he shifted over to writing scholarly works rather than producing propaganda. He wrote for the ''

Asahi Shimbun is a Japanese daily newspaper founded in 1879. It is one of the oldest newspapers in Japan and Asia, and is considered a newspaper of record for Japan. The ''Asahi Shimbun'' is one of the five largest newspapers in Japan along with the ''Yom ...

'' from 1918 to 1940. Zenmaro died in 1980.

References

Works cited

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Toki, Zenmaro 20th-century Japanese poets 1885 births 1980 deaths Writers from Tokyo Waseda University alumni