Isamu Yoshii was a Japanese tanka poet and playwright active in Taisho and Showa period Japan. Attracted to European romanticism in his youth, his later works were more subdued.
Background
Isamu Yoshii was born in the elite Takanawa district Tokyo. He was born on October 8, 1886. His grandfather, Count Yoshii Tomosane was a former samurai retainer of Satsuma Domain, and member of the House of Peers, the Privy Council and official in the Imperial Household Ministry. His aunt was the wife of Field Marshal Oyama Iwao.
Education
Yoshii began to live at his father's cottage in the Zaimokuza neighborhood of Kamakura, Kanagawa prefecture from 1887 and entered the elementary section of the Kamakura Normal School in 1891. The following year the family returned to Tokyo, but for the rest of his life, he returned to Kamakura frequently to recuperate from bouts of ill health (i.e. tuberculosis).
Isamu Yoshii started to write short verses while attending school at Tokyo Metropolitan No.1 Junior High School and Kogyokusha Junior High School.
Yoshii enrolled briefly in the School of Political Science and Economics at Waseda University in 1908, but dropped out the same year to join Yosano Tekkan's Tokyo Shin-shi Sha (Tokyo New Poetry Society), and began contributing his tanka verses to the society's literary magazine, Myojo (Bright Star).
Career
Yoshii left Myojo to form a new group, Pan no Kai, together with Kitahara Hakushu due to their shared attraction of romanticism and aestheticism. In 1909, with the patronage of Mori Ogai, Yoshii brought out a new literary magazine, Subaru.
In 1910, Yoshii published his first tanka anthology, Sakehogai, (Revelry) describing the joys and sorrows of a young poet given to wine and women. This established his name firmly in poetry circles and was followed by other tanka anthologies such as Sakujitsu made (Until Yesterday), Gion kashu (Gion Verses, 1915), and Tokyo koto shu (Collection from the Tokyo Red-Light District, 1916).
Yoshii was also interested in the Shingeki (New Theater) movement. His first stage play, called Gogo Sanji (3 PM), was published in Subaru in 1911, marking his debut as a playwright. This was followed by pieces such as Yumesuke to So to (Yumesuke and the Monk), and Kyo Geinin (Comic Artist).
He joined the Radio Drama Kenkyukai with Kubota Mantaro at the request of Tokyo Broadcasting Corporation (later NHK), which started broadcasting radio programs in 1925. In the same year, he released scripts for radio dramas, such as Saigo no Seppun (The Last Kiss), Gekijo Iriguchi no Hanjikan (Half an Hour at the Theater Door), and Kamome no Shigai (Dead Seagull). In 1927, his play Ame no Yobanashi (Night Stories in the Rain) about a melancholic traveling performer wandering around the country was broadcast as a radio drama. The story proved very popular and gained Yoshii a wide following in the early days of radio.
In his later years, Yoshii lived in a house at the base of Mount Hiei in Kyoto, and was a frequent visitor to the Gion entertainment district.
Yoshii died in 1960 at the age of 74. His grave is at the Aoyama Cemetery in Tokyo.
Membership
Japan Art Academy
,
Japan
Connections
In 1933, Yoshii was forced to divorce his wife, Nobuko, who was the center of the “Florida Dance Hall Scandal”, a major scandal involving adultery by members of the nobility with commoners.