Kitamura Tokoku - Literary Career

Literary Career

Kitamura married Ishizaka Mina at the age of 19 in 1888, and in the same year he published the long verse Soshū no shi ("The Poem of the Prisoner"), which was the longest Japanese poem written in free verse up until that time. He followed this with the poetic drama Hōrai kyoku ("The Drama of Mount Hōrai"). He claimed to be influenced by the works of Byron, Emerson and Carlyle; his wife's Christianity also greatly influenced his outlook.

Kitamura turned from poetry to essays, and wrote works extolling the “life-espousing views” of the West, over the “life-denying view” of Buddhism and traditional Japanese Shinto thought. His attempts to explore the nature of the self and the potential for the individual, particularly in his seminal work Naibu seimei ron ("Theory of Inner Life"), are regarded by some as the starting point of modern Japanese literature.

He was a close associate of Shimazaki Tōson, whom he strongly influenced towards the romantic literary movement.

Kitamura was hired as an English teacher at the Friends Girl's School in 1890. He frequented the Azabu Christian Church. In 1893, he took over the post held by Shimazaki Tōson at Meiji Girl's School (now Meiji Gakuin University). He also submitted literary criticism to the literary magazine Bungakukai, which he helped launch with Shimazaki Tōson in 1893. Around this time he began to show signs of mental instability and depression.

Before dawn on 16 May 1894, he hanged himself in his garden at his home near Shiba Park in Tokyo. His grave is at the temple of Zuisho-ji in Shirogane, Tokyo.