Takuboku Ishikawa

Takuboku Ishikawa was born Hajime Ishikawa in Iwate Prefecture, Japan. He dropped out of school at age 16 to become a poet and is recognized as a master of the tanka form. He published his first collection, titled in English translation as Yearning, in 1905, when he was just 19. He moved to Tokyo in 1908 and joined the literary scene there. His second book, A Handful of Sand (1910), established Ishikawa’s mastery of the tanka form; the poems were by turns intellectual, ironic, and intimate. Ishikawa’s other poetry collections include Whistle and Flute (1912) and Sad Toys (1912), which was published just two months after his death from tuberculosis.

Ishikawa’s personal life was turbulent, and he scraped out an existence for himself and his extended family as a proofreader. His Romaji Diary, first published in 1954, detailed his complex emotional life and intellectual pursuits. Ishikawa wrote it in Roman letters so that his wife couldn’t read it. Roger Pulvers has noted that diaristic impulses inform Ishikawa’s poetry as well. “His tanka taken together also loosely form a kind of diary of event, internal and external,” Pulvers writes. “Takuboku wrote that poetry itself was a report in detail of changes in an individual’s emotions. His diaries and his poetry are permeated with a sincere and searching self-examination.”

English translations of Ishikawa’s works include Poems to Eat (trans. Carl Sesar, 1966) and Romaji Diary and Sad Toys (trans. Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shinoda, 1985, reissued 2000). Donald Keene wrote a full-length biography of Ishikawa, The First Modern Japanese (2016).