Jūkichi Yagi

Jūkichi Yagi
Jūkichi Yagi
Born	八木 重吉 (1898-02-09)9 February 1898 Machida, Tokyo, Japan
Died	October 26, 1927(1927-10-26) (aged 29) Chigasaki, Kanagawa, Japan
Resting place	Yagi family cemetery, Machida, Tokyo
Occupation	school teacher
Genre	religious poetry

Jūkichi Yagi (八木 重吉, Yagi Jūkichi, February 9, 1898 – October 26, 1927) was a Japanese poet active in late Taishō and for the first few years of Shōwa period Japan who focused on modern religious themes.

Biography

Born in what is now part of the city Machida near Tokyo, Yagi attended the Kanagawa Prefectural Normal School, then located in Kamakura, Kanagawa prefecture, where he converted to Methodism and became attracted to the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore. In 1919, Yagi was baptized at the Komagome Christian Church in Tokyo. He remained a devout Protestant all his short life, but later migrated to Non-Church Christianity (Mukyōkai) as advocated by Uchimura Kanzō.

After graduation, Yagi taught at the Mikage Normal School in Hyōgo Prefecture, and he began to write verse as an expression of his faith. He was also very much inspired by the poems of John Keats, to whom he dedicated a number of his poems. Yagi published his first collection of poems Aki no Hitome ("Autumn Eye") in 1925. Although Yagi contributed several pieces to poetry magazines, he remained shy of literary circles.

Hospitalized with tuberculosis in Chigasaki, Kanagawa in 1926, he died on October 26, 1927. It was only after his death and the publication of Mazushiki Shinto ("Humble Believer"), Yagi Jukichi Shishu ("Yagi Jukichi Anthology"), and Kami O Yobu ("Talk to God") that he gained widespread recognition.

See also

• Japanese literature
• List of Japanese authors

References

• Keene, Donald. Dawn to the West. Columbia University Press (1998). ISBN 0-231-11435-4
• Okada, Akiko. Keats And English Romanticism in Japan. Peter Lang (2006). ISBN 3-03-910-787-9

External links

• Yagi Jukichi Memorial Museum in Machida Template:Ja
• Grave site at Yagi family cemetery, Machida, Tokyo