Junzaburō Nishiwaki

Junzaburō Nishiwaki (西脇順三郎) was a contemporary Japanese poet and literary critic, active in Shōwa period Japan.

Early life
Nishiwaki was born in Ojiya in Niigata prefecture, where his father was a banker. He came to Tokyo intending to become a painter and studied under the famous Fujishima Takeji and Kuroda Seiki but had to give up an artistic career due to his father’s sudden death. Instead, he enrolled in Keio University's Department of Economics, and also studied Latin, English, Greek, and German. Even as a student he demonstrated extraordinary language abilities, writing his thesis entirely in Latin.

Literary career
Nishiwaki became interested in poetry while a student at Keio University, and contributed verses to the boy's magazine Shonen Sekai. He also began to write poetry in English. Nishiwaki expressed distaste for the romanticism and subjective modes which dominated modern Japanese poetry.

He accepted a teaching post at Keiō University in 1920, while continuing to contribute English verses to various journals, and editing poetry magazines on the side.

After graduation, he was hired by the Japan Times newspaper, but was forced to resign due to poor health. Soon afterwards, in 1922, Nishiwaki went to study at Oxford University in Great Britain where he spent the next three years. While at Oxford, he was introduced to modernist literature and the works of James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and T. S. Eliot. He was also fascinated by Charles Baudelaire and developments in the French surrealism, and even attempted to compose some works in French. His first volume of poetry, Spectrum (1925), was written in English and published in London at his own expense.

Returning to Japan, Nishiwaki accepted a position as a professor at Keiō University and taught the history of English Literature as well as a range of courses in linguistics. However, he kept writing on the side, and was especially inspired by the poetry of Hagiwara Sakutarō, who was lauded by critics as one of the great poets of the Taishō period. Nishiwaki experimented with new techniques, and began writing poetry in Japanese for the first time. In 1927, he published Japan's first surrealist poetry magazine, Fukuiku Taru Kafu Yo. The next year, along with collaborators such as Anzai Fuyue, he brought out another new magazine Shi to Shiron ("Poetry and Poetic Theory") and became a leader of the new contemporary poetry movement. In 1933, he published Ambarvalia, a collection which gathered together the previous experiments and efforts in writing poetry in Japanese; however, Nishiwaki suddenly stopped publishing two years later.

Later literary career
Nishiwaki lived in Kamakura, Kanagawa prefecture during the Pacific War years of 1942-1944. After the war, he revealed another major collection titled Tabibito kaerazu ("No Traveler Returns"). Nishiwaki also devoted effort to translation, publishing a Japanese version of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, which was received with great critical acclaim. He followed this with yet another collection of his own verse in 1953, titled Kindai no gūwa ("Modern Fables").

While writing poetry and translations, Nishiwaki continued teaching at Keiō University until his retirement in 1962.

In 1962, Nishiwaki was appointed to the Japan Art Academy, and in 1974 was made a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Nishiwaki died of heart failure at the age of 88 at his hometown in Niigata. His grave is at the temple of Zōjō-ji in Shiba, Tokyo.