Utsubo Kubota
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Wada Village, Higashichikuma District, Nagano Prefecture, Japan
Utsubo Kubota | |
|---|---|
| Native name | 窪田 空穂 |
| Born | June 8, 1877 Wada Village, Higashichikuma District, Nagano Prefecture, Japan |
| Died | April 12, 1967 (aged 89) |
| Occupation | poet |
| Genre | tanka poetry |
| Literary movement | Naturalism |
Utsubo Kubota (窪田 空穂 Kubota Utsubo; 1877–1967) was a Japanese tanka poet. He also wrote poetry in other forms, as well as prose fiction and non-fiction critical and scholarly works on Japanese classical literature. He was a lecturer at Waseda University.
Utsubo Kubota was born on 8 June 1877.[1] He was born in Wada Village, Higashichikuma District (modern-day Matsumoto City), Nagano Prefecture.[2] His real name was Tsūji Kubota (窪田 通治 Kubota Tsūji).[2]
He graduated the School of Letters at the Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō (present-day Waseda University).[2] After working as a reporter for various newspapers and magazines,[2] he returned to Waseda to become a lecturer on literature.[2]
He died on 12 April 1967.[1]
Writings
Kubota was a leading poet of the Japanese Naturalist school.[3] He wrote many tanka,[3] as well as poems of other forms such as the chōka.[3]
He first came to the attention of the poet Tekkan Yosano for a tanka he published in the magazine Bunko in 1900.[2] Early in his literary career he published shintaishi (poetry in modern forms) and tanka in Tekkan's important magazine Myōjō, but left after less than a year.[2]
In 1905 he published the anthology Mahiruno (まひる野).[2] It was also around this time that he took an interest in the philosophy of Naturalism[2] and began writing prose fiction,[2] researching classical Japanese literature,[1] and engaging in literary criticism.[2]
1911 saw the publication of his short story collection Rohen (炉辺).[2]
In 1912 he published Utsubo Kashū (空穂歌集),[2] with the intention of distancing himself from tanka,[2] but he continued to write them throughout his career.[3]
