Tekkan Yosano



Tekkan Yosano (与謝野 鉄幹 Yosano Tekkan) was the pen-name of Yosano Hiroshi, a Japanese author and poet active in late Meiji, Taishō and early Shōwa period Japan. His wife was fellow author Yosano Akiko. Kaoru Yosano, cabinet minister and politician is his grandson.

Early life
Yosano was born in Kyoto as the son of Buddhist priest, and was a graduate of Keio University. After graduation, he taught Japanese language for four years at Tokuyama Girls' School, in what is now Shunan city, Yamaguchi prefecture. He was forced to quit over alleged improprieties with one of his students. At the age of 20, he moved to Tokyo, and as he was always interested in Japanese literature, he became a disciple of Michia Naofumi, a noted poet and scholar of the Japanese language. He supported himself as a staff writer for Tokyo newspapers. On 11 May 1894, he published a strongly worded article encouraging the reform of traditional Japanese poetry, or waka, to give it more originality and thus make it more popular.

Literary career
In 1900, Yosano founded the literary magazine Myōjō (Bright Star), and soon collected a circle of famous poets, including Kitahara Hakushū, Yoshii Isamu and Ishikawa Takuboku. The magazine was immediately popular with young poets who shared Yosano's enthusiasm for revitalizing waka through the medium of tanka poetry. One of the earliest contributors to his magazine was a young woman named Hō Shō, better known by her pen-name (after her marriage to Yosano) Yosano Akiko.

Yosano's own works include Bokoku no on (Obligation to the Fatherland, 1894), which despite its nationalist title was a collection of literary criticism, and Tozai namboku (East-west, north-south, 1896), an anthology of his tanka poetry.