Ken'ichi Yoshida (literary scholar)

Yoshida Ken'ichi
Yoshida Ken'ichi
Born	(1912-04-01)1 April 1912 Tokyo, Japan
Died	3 August 1977(1977-08-03) (aged 65) Yokohama, Japan
Occupation	Writer
Genre	novels, English literature translations
Relatives	Shigeru Yoshida (father) Yukiko Yoshida (mother) Tarō Asō (nephew) Princess Tomohito of Mikasa (niece)

Ken'ichi Yoshida (吉田 健一, Yoshida Ken'ichi, 1 April 1912 - 3 August 1977) was a Japanese author and literary critic in Shōwa period Japan.

Early life

Yoshida was born in Tokyo as the eldest son of Shigeru Yoshida, who at the time was a diplomat posted in Rome (and later became Prime Minister of Japan). His mother Yukiko, a daughter of Count Makino Nobuaki, left Tokyo soon after Ken'ichi's birth to join her husband, so he was raised at the Makino household during the first few years of his life. He started living with his parents at the age of six, when his father was posted in Qingdao. Thereafter he lived in Paris, London, and Tianjin (where he studied at a school for British children) before moving back to Tokyo where he graduated from secondary school. In October 1930 he enrolled at King's College of the University of Cambridge, where was interested in the works of William Shakespeare, Charles Baudelaire, and Jules Laforgue. He became a student of Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, but moved back to Tokyo in February 1931, on Dickinson's advice that in order to devote his life to literature he should live in Japan. During the next few years he studied French in Tokyo.

Literary career

Yoshida’s début as a writer was in 1935 with a translation of Edgar Allan Poe's Memorandum (Oboegaki). Over the next several years, he translated a number of workds of French literature into Japanese. His debut into literary criticism was an article on the works of Laforgue, published in Bungakukai in January 1939. In 1939, together with Nakamura Mitsuo and Yamamoto Kenkichi, Yoshida co-founded the literary magazine Hihyō (批評) (literally, "Critique(s)"), which published critiques of modern French and British authors. Post-war decades saw Yoshida's prolific output, with works ranging from translations of Charles Baudelaire and English literature including William Shakespeare to fiction, with short stories and novels. He also published lighter works such as Saishō Onzōshi Hinkyusu (宰相御曹司貧窮す, "Prime Minister's Eldest Son Suffers Dire Poverty"), which was titled by its publisher against his wishes, so he also published a private edition of the same work under the title Detarameron (出鱈目論, "On Hogwash").

Yoshida lived in Kamakura, Kanagawa prefecture between 1946 and 1953 and maintained a long correspondence with various Kamakura literati, including Ishikawa Jun, Ōoka Shōhei, Kobayashi Hideo, Mishima Yukio, and Nakamura Mitsuo. He was awarded the prestigious Yomiuri Prize in 1957 and1971 and the Noma Literary Prize in 1970.

Yoshida died in his home in Tokyo in 1977, shortly after returning from a trip to Europe, at the age of 65; his grave is located at the Kuboyama Reien cemetery in Yokohama.

Legend had it that, due to his Cantabrigian education, albeit brief, Yoshida conceived in English more than in his native Japanese.

References

• Katō, Shūichi. A History of Japanese Literature. RoutledgeCurzon (1997) ISBN 1-873410-48-4