HAGIWARA SAKUTARÔ (1886–1942). Hagiwara Sakutarô was a free verse poet, essayist, and literary critic from Gunma Prefecture. He was interested in poetry at an early age and published tanka verses in the journal Myôjô (Venus) in his teens. He enrolled in two universities, but dropped out of both after a combined five semesters. In 1913, Hagiwara published five tanka poems in a journal edited by Kitahara Hakushû, and Kitahara became Hagiwara’s mentor. The following year he joined Murô Saisei and Christian minister Yamamura Bochô (1884–1924) in creating a literary journal Takujô Funsui (Tabletop Fountain). He later published controversial poetry anthologies, including his modernist collection Aoneko (1923; tr. Blue Cat, 1978), and wrote literary criticism focusing on Japanese poetry.
HAIKU. Haiku (called haikai until the Meiji era) is a simplified lyric form derived from traditional tanka poetry consisting of 17 syllables in the pattern 5–7–5. During the Tokugawa period, haiku emerged under the guidance and genius of Matsuo Bashô (1644–94) and was further reformed by the poets Yosa Buson (1716–84) and Kobayashi Issa (1763–1827). During the Meiji period, poet Masaoka Shiki strongly criticized Bashô, objecting to the gamelike point system haiku schools used to grade student compositions and the lack of masculine sophistication in Bashô’s work. Conversely, Masaoka held the highest praise for Buson’s poetry and predicted the demise of haiku due to its lack of innovation. Despite Shiki’s pessimism, however, both his contemporaries, such as Natsume Sôseki, and subsequent poets, such as Taneda Santôka (1882–1940) and Katô Shûson (1905–93), pursued the art, and today haiku clubs and circles regularly publish their poems in literary journals and newspapers. See also FREE VERSE; KUME MASAO; MIKI ROFÛ; NAKAMURA TEIJO; TSUJI KUNIO.
HAKAI. Hakai (1906; tr. The Broken Commandment, 1956), a naturalist novel by Shimazaki Tôson, tells of a schoolteacher named Ushimatsu who tries to conceal his identity as a member of the burakumin untouchable class. When his idol and mentor, an “outed” burakumin politician, is murdered, Ushimatsu decides to confess his secret to his students and is fired in disgrace. The novel ends as he departs in the snow, resolved to make a new life for himself in Texas.
HAKUBUNKAN. Hakubunkan publishing house was founded by Ohashi Sahei (1835–1901) in 1887. Within two years the company was publishing 10 magazines and in five years had published 500 book titles, eventually reaching 87 magazine and 6,500 book titles. At the turn of the 19th century, Hakubunkan redefined the publishing industry with the lead periodical Taiyô (The Sun) and pioneered vertical integration of the printing industry through in-house writers, paper service, and private newswire. Under editor Oshikawa Shunrô (1876–1914), Hakubunkan also initiated mass-oriented children’s literature and pictorial novels from adventure stories. Extensive national networks allowed Hakubunkan to influence literary and political movements through selective publishing. The extent of its influence, however, led to its being liquidated during the Allied Occupation. See also AKAI TORI.
HANIYA YUTAKA (1909–1997). Haniya Yutaka was born in Taiwan when it was a Japanese colony. He was initially drawn to anarchism, but joined the Communist Party in 1931 and was arrested and imprisoned. After World War II, he founded the small literary journal Kindai Bungaku (Modern Literature), which burgeoned into a popular periodical. Through Kindai Bungaku Haniya became acquainted with and published author Abe Kôbô. Haniya won the Tanizaki Jun’ichirô Prize for his collection Yami no naka no kuroi uma (Black Horses in the Darkness, 1970). See also MARXISM.
HANSHIZEN SHUGI. See ANTINATURALISM.
HAYAMA YOSHIKI (1894–1945). Hayama Yoshiki was an author associated with the proletarian literature movement. His best-known work is Umi ni ikuru hitobito (Men Who Live on the Sea, 1933), a novel about labor conditions on workboats. Hayama spent time in prison for his involvement with the labor movement, but became a nationalist during World War II. See also MARXISM.
HAYASHI FUMIKO (1903–1951). Hayashi Fumiko was born an illegitimate child in Kyushu and moved around the island with her mother. After graduating high school, Hayashi went to Tokyo with her lover, did odd jobs, and helped launch the poetry magazine Futari (Two). She then lived with several different men before marrying Tezuka Rokubin (1902–89) in 1926. She published the serialized I-Novel Hôrôki (1928; tr. Diary of a Vagabond, 1951) in a women’s magazine, and it became a bestseller for which she wrote two sequels. During World War II, Hayashi joined a journalist group called Jûgun sakka (Campaigning Writers) and served in the military in China and French Indochina. After the war, she wrote many novels and essays, including Bangiku (1948; tr. Late Chrysanthemum, 1956), which was awarded the Women’s Literature Prize and was later made into a film. A prolific writer, translated into many foreign languages, Hayashi died in 1951 of a heart attack. See also FEMINISM.
HAYASHI MARIKO (1954–). Novelist and essayist Hayashi Mariko was born in Yamanashi Prefecture. After graduating from Nihon University, she worked as a copywriter. Her professional debut came with the essay collection Runrun o katte ouchi ni kaerô (Let’s Buy ‘Run-run’ and Head Home, 1982), which became a bestseller. She was awarded the Naoki Prize in 1985 and subsequently has won the Yoshikawa Eiji Prize and Shibata Renzaburô Prize. Her novels and essays focus on the challenges women face in their lives. Hayashi is currently on the selection committee of the Naoki Prize. See also FEMINISM.
HAYASHI TATSUO (1896–1984). Hayashi Tatsuo was an intellectual and literary critic who wrote many books about the history of civilization, culture, and the Occidental mind. He was born in Tokyo but spent his youth in Seattle with his diplomat father. After high school in Kyoto, he studied philosophy under Nishida Kitarô (1870–1945) at Kyoto University. Following his graduation, he became a professor of cultural history at Tôyô University and also taught at Tsudajuku and Hôsei universities and was on the editing committees of philosophical journals. After World War II, Hayashi became chief of the Chûô Kôron publishing house. Opposed to socialist idealogy, he was awarded the Asahi Cultural Prize in 1973 for his research and writings on the Occidental mind. Hayashi died of old age in Kanagawa Prefecture.
HEARN, LAFCADIO (1850–1904). Lafcadio Hearn (Japanese citizenship name Koizumi Yakumo) was an American newspaper correspondent and Japanese author. He was born in Greece and moved to Ohio in the late 1860s. He worked as a correspondent for the Cincinnati Daily Enquirer but later moved to New Orleans. While there he also contributed many publications to national periodicals, such as Harper’s Weekly and Scribner’s Magazine.
In 1890, Hearn moved to Japan on assignment and taught school in remote Matsue, Shimane Prefecture. There he married Koizumi Setsu (1868–1932) and became a naturalized Japanese citizen before moving to Kumamoto just over a year later, where he completed his most famous work, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, in 1894 (later translated into Japanese as Shirarezu Nihon no omokage). After a short stint in Kobe at a newspaper, he taught English literature at Tokyo University from 1896–1903, and there penned the books In Ghostly Japan (1899) and Kaidan (1904), both collections of Japanese ghost stories. He died of heart failure in Tokyo. His writings had an influence on Japanese writers Kawabata Yasunari and Mishima Yukio. See also FOREIGN AUTHORS WRITING IN JAPANESE; JAPONISME.
HEMEDEN. Hemeden (Cross-Eyed Den, 1895) was the first novel written by Hirotsu Ryûrô. Hemeden, followed shortly by Hirotsu’s second novel, Kurotokage (Black Lizard, 1895), established a new Japanese literary genre, the serious novel. Hemeden captures the gloomy life of Den, a cross-eyed, grotesquely deformed dwarf. Taunted by peers and the world at large, hardworking and amiable Den falls in love with a young girl named Ohama. Ohama’s cousin deceives Den into paying him to help Den’s chances with Ohama, and Den is eventually driven to commit robbery and murder to pay his debts. Den is sent to the gallows, clinging to the illusion that Ohama loves him.
HI NO HASHIRA. Hi no hashira (1903–4; tr. Pillar of Fire, 1972) is a novel by author Kinoshita Naoe that was published serially in the Mainichi newspaper over a 14-month span prior to and during the Russo-Japanese War. The novel depicts tycoons and government purveyors looking to make a large profit off the war, covert government repression of the antiwar movement, and the exile of socialist Christians from their churches. It is considered to be one of the first Japanese socialist novels. See also MILITARISM.
HIBAKUSHA BUNGAKU. See ATOMIC BOMB LITERATURE.
HIDDEN CHRISTIANS. See KAKURE KIRISHITAN.
HIGUCHI ICHIYÔ (1872–1896). Higuchi Ichiyô, given name Natsu, is considered to be the first female professional writer of modern Japanese literature. Born in Tokyo, she studied at the Haginoya, a poetry school, but after the deaths of her brother and father worked odd jobs to help make ends meet until she turned to writing at age 20. Her first major work, “Ôtsugomori” (1894; tr. On the Last Day of the Year, 1981), was followed the next year by “Takekurabe” (1895–96; tr. Growing Up, 1956), “Nigorie” (1895; tr. Troubled Waters, 1953), and “Jûsan’ya” (1895; tr. The Thirteenth Night, 1960–61). Higuchi died of tuberculosis in 1896 at the age of 23. Her life story has been retold in both film and television drama, and her portrait appears on the current five thousand yen note. See also FEMINISM; PSEUDO-CLASSICISM; ROMANTICISM; WOMEN IN LITERATURE.
HIJIKATA YOSHI (1898–1959). Hijikata Yoshi was a Tokyo-born theater director who was active in the shingeki theater reform movement and joined with Osanai Kaoru in 1924 to create the Tsukiji Little Theater, the first in the world to use electric illumination. The theater featured foreign plays by such playwrights as Anton Chekov and Maxim Gorky translated into Japanese. However, with Osanai’s sudden death in 1928, Hijikata was ousted from control, and in 1929 he formed the New Tsukiji Theater Company with the aim to focus on more socialist-realist theater. This new company adapted many of the novels of the contemporary proletarian literature movement. In 1932, however, government opposition became fierce and Hijikata was arrested. The following year he fled to the Soviet Union and remained there in fear of persecution by the thought police. He was deported to Europe in 1937 and stayed for four years before returning to Japan, where he was immediately arrested. After World War II, he was released and joined the Communist Party. See also MARXISM.
HIKARI AGATA (1943–1992). Hikari Agata was a novelist from Tokyo. He enrolled at Waseda University but dropped out after his first year and became a copywriter, contributor to a monthly magazine, and freelance writer. He was awarded a new writer prize for his novel Juka no kazoku (A Family Party, 1982) and published Uhohho tankentai (The ‘Ahem!’ Expedition Team, 1983), which was an Akutagawa Ryûnosuke Prize finalist. Hikari’s works centered on themes of feminism as well as the degradation of the family in society. His literary career was cut short when he died of stomach cancer. Hikari published 18 novels, four essays, and two translations during his lifetime. A few of his works have been turned into films or television dramas.
HINO ASHIHEI (1907–1960). Hino Ashihei was a soldier in the Japanese army in China who wrote and published war novels about the daily life of soldiers. These include Mugi to Heitai (1938; tr. Wheat and Soldiers, 1958) and Fun’nyôtan (Tales of Excrement and Urine, 1937), for which he received the Akutagawa Ryûnosuke Prize, delivered to him in Manchuria by Kobayashi Hideo. He took his own life at age 53. See also SUICIDE.
HINO KEIZÔ (1929–2002). Hino Keizô was a journalist and novelist from Tokyo. He grew up in Korea when it was still a colony of Japan, but returned to Japan to study and graduated from Tokyo University. He took a job with the Yomiuri newspaper and served as a correspondent in Korea and Vietnam, then began writing novels, winning the Akutagawa Ryûnosuke Prize for Ano yûhi (The Evening Sun, 1974). He was awarded the Tanizaki Jun’ichirô Prize for Sakyû ga ugoku yô ni (As the Sand Dunes Move, 1986). He also translated works from Vietnamese into Japanese.
HIRABAYASHI TAIKO (1905–1972). Novelist Hirabayashi Taiko, given name Tai, was born in Nagano Prefecture. Drawn to socialism in high school, she moved to Tokyo after graduation and lived with anarchist Yamamoto Torazô. Following the Kantô Earthquake, the two were exiled from Tokyo and moved to Manchuria, where she gave birth in Dalian to a baby girl, who died shortly thereafter from malnutrition. That experience was the basis of her proletarian novel Seiryôshitsu nite (In the Charity Hospital, 1928). Her novel Kô iu onna (This Kind of Woman, 1946) received the first Women’s Literature Prize. Royalties from her long career were used to establish the Hirabayashi Taiko Literary Prize in 1973, and a museum in her honor is located in her hometown of Suwa. See also FEMINISM; MARXISM; WOMEN IN LITERATURE.
HIROTSU KAZUO (1891–1968). Hirotsu Kazuo, novelist, translator and literary critic, was the son of novelist Hirotsu Ryûrô. He published the literary journal Kiseki (Miracle), to which he contributed translations of European literature and short stories. During World War II, he moved to Shizuoka Prefecture near friend Shiga Naoya. A critic of nihilism, Hirotsu became part of the proletarian literature movement of the 1930s and later wrote I-Novels. He won the Noma Prize for Nengetsu no ashiato (The Footsteps of Time, 1963). He also wrote an extensive defense of the accused Communist saboteurs in the Matsukawa incident, published in two parts, Izumi e no michi (Road to the Spring, 1953–54) and Matsukawa Saiban (The Matsukawa Trial, 1954–58). See also KASAI ZENZÔ; MARXISM; UNO KÔJI.
HIROTSU RYÛRÔ (1861–1928). Hirotsu Ryûrô, given name Naoto, was a Meiji novelist famous for his tragic novels. Born in Nagasaki, he traveled to Tokyo in 1874 to study German and then turned to writing in 1885 after serving four years in the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce. Hirotsu joined the Ken’yûsha literary group and published two novels, Hemeden (Cross-Eyed Den, 1895) and Kurotokage (Black Lizard, 1895), which epitomized the tragic novel. His most famous work was Imado Shinjû (Double Suicide at Imado, 1896). Retiring in 1908, Hirotsu died of a heart attack 20 years later. He was the father of writer Hirotsu Kazuo. See also SERIOUS NOVELS.
HISAN SHÔSETSU. See TRAGIC NOVELS.
HON’AN. See ADAPTATION.
HON’ANMONO. See ADAPTIVE TRANSLATIONS.
HON’YAKU. See TRANSLATION.
HORI TATSUO (1904–1953). Hori Tatsuo was a writer, poet, and translator born in Tokyo and graduated from Tokyo University. As a student he helped to translate French poetry for Roba (Donkey), a literary journal. During his literary career, he wrote a number of novelettes and poems. His early writing was in the spirit of proletarian literature, while his later work tended more toward modernism. Much of his work, such as his most famous novel Kaze tachinu (1936–37; tr. The Wind Awakes, 1947), a love story set in a mountain sanitarium, was characterized by the theme of death, reflecting his own struggle with tuberculosis, to which he eventually succumbed at age 49. See also MARXISM; NAKAMURA SHIN’ICHIRÔ; NAKANO SHIGEHARU; SATA INEKO.
HORIGUICHI DAIGAKU (1892–1981). Horiguchi Daigaku was a poet and French literature translator from Tokyo. His first name, which means “university,” was given him by his college-student father because he was born near the campus of Tokyo University. He enrolled in Keiô University to study literature, but dropped out. Always an active poet, he was a member of the Shinshisha (New Poetry Society) and also contributed tanka to various literary journals. Through his association with Yosano Tekkan and Yosano Akiko he was persuaded to try his hand at other forms of poetry. At 19 Horiguchi traveled abroad with his diplomat father and spent the next 14 years in Mexico, Belgium, Spain, and Brazil, becoming fluent in French with a particular interest in symbolism. His first poetry anthology was titled Gekkô to piero (Moonlight and Clowns, 1919). Upon returning to Japan, he published a translation of contemporary French poetry titled Gekka no ichigun (A Moonlit Gathering, 1925). He published over 20 books of poetry during his lifetime and was awarded the Order of Cultural Merit in 1979.
HOSHI SHIN’ICHI (1926–1997). Hoshi Shin’ichi, novelist and science fiction writer, is best known for his “short-short” science fiction stories. Often no more than three or four pages, these works deal with a plethora of topics, and he wrote over a thousand of them during his lifetime. He also wrote mysteries and won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 1968. Several of his books and collections of short stories have been translated into English, including Nokku no oto ga (1965; tr. There Was a Knock, 1984), a collection of 15 stories, and Ki magure robotto (1966; tr. The Capricious Robot, 1986). He won the Japan Science Fiction Grand Prize in 1998. Since 1979, there has been an annual Hoshi Shin’ichi Short-Short Contest, with the winning stories published in an anthology.
HOTOTOGISU. Hototogisu (The Cuckoo, 1898), a novel written by Tokutomi Roka, received wide acclaim when first published. The romantic story captures the deep affection between valiant young naval officer Takeo and his beautiful and refined wife Namiko. Namiko’s jealous stepmother and Takeo’s overprotective mother are constant threats to the couple’s traditional marriage. Namiko becomes a victim of the unrealistically high expectations and frustrations of her Western-educated stepmother. After Namiko contracts tuberculosis, Takeo’s mother suggests that he divorce his wife before her illness sweeps through the family. Takeo’s indisputable love for Namiko dramatizes the conflict of love over family and social pressures. See also WOMEN IN LITERATURE.
HOTTA YOSHIE (1918–1998). Hotta Yoshie was a novelist from Toyama Prefecture who graduated from Keiô University. While in college he composed poems and worked with the literary journal Hihyô (Criticism). He worked in Shanghai but returned to Japan after the war and focused on writing novels. In 1956, he traveled to India to participate in an Asian authors conference and published his experiences in the paperback Indo de kangaeta koto (Thoughts from India, 1957). This launched his attempt to familiarize the world with Japanese culture and was the impetus for his traveling to various countries. He based many of his subsequent novels on these experiences. Hotta won the Akutagawa Ryûnosuke Prize for Hiroba no kodoku (1951; tr. Solitude in the Plaza, 1955), and his Hôjôki shiki (Personal Reflections on the Hôjôki, 1971) was also critically acclaimed and is currently being made into an animated film.
HYÔRON. See LITERARY CRITICISM.