Takuboku Ishikawa

Ishikawa Takuboku (1886-1912) was a Japanese poet who transformed the tanka, a short five-line verse form with a long history. He lived during the Meiji era, when Japan was changing rapidly toward modernity, and wrote in Japanese. His significance lies in bringing the tanka closer to everyday speech and to the personal experience of his own time.

He was born in Iwate Prefecture, the son of a Buddhist priest, and spent his childhood in several villages of the region. As a teenager he left middle school in Morioka to devote himself to literature and moved to Tokyo, where he met figures connected to Yosano Tekkan and Akiko Yosano. His early verse had a romantic tone. He then drew close to the naturalist magazine Myōjō, but eventually turned away from that movement toward poetry of social protest.

His life was unsettled. He worked as a substitute teacher, a newspaper reporter and a proofreader, moved often between cities, and struggled with money. He published A Handful of Sand in 1910, his best-known work, and died of tuberculosis in 1912 at the age of twenty-six. His second collection, Sad Toys, appeared after his death. He also kept diaries, some written in a Latin-script transliteration of Japanese, and left many letters.

His legacy is twofold. He is regarded as a renewer of modern Japanese poetry, yet much attention paid to him has focused on his biography, shaped by poverty and illness. An asteroid has borne his name since 1988.