Background
Torahiko Kori was born in 1890 in Tokyo.
Torahiko Kori was born in 1890 in Tokyo.
As a high school student, Kori memorised poems by Byron and Shelley and devoured fin-de-siecle writers such as Wilde, Arthur Schnitzler, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Gabriele D’Annunzio.
Torahiko Kori left Tokyo University without graduating to join the editorial staff of Shirakaba (a literary magazine) in 1909.
Early in his short literary career, Kori Torahiko became an enfant terrible of the Shirakaba School, a group of writers and artists whose works reflected the liberal, democratic and humanistic spirit of the Taisho era (1912-1926).
At the age of twenty, Kori began editing and publishing with Yanagi Muneyoshi (Soetsu), founder of the Mingei movement, and around 1923 became a frequent contributor to the major literary magazines of the day.
In 1909 Kori Torahiko won first prize in the contest held by Taiyo (Sun) magazine with his play titled "The Matsuyama Family," which brought him into prominence as a promising dramatist. His fame was established when the Imperial Theatre staged his play DOJOJI (1912). The following year he left for Europe. At London Kori met Miss Esther Saintsbury, the poetess, and they remained friends till his death. Wrote plays in London. His first drama to be staged there was "Kanawa" (Iron Ring) (1917). Another of his plays "Toils of foshitomo" ran for three weeks at the Little Theatre, London. Other plays similarly staged were "Saul and David" and "Absaiom."
Despite his close association with the Shirakaba School, Kori in his taste for Romantic and decadent literature was at odds with the prevailing Shirakaba partiality for realist literature, particularly that of Tolstoy. In his mature prose style Kori also turned away from the Shirakaba writers’ tendency to sinewy colloquialism and airy realism in favour of a more flowery, convoluted prose style à la D’Annunzio or Walter Pater.
Quotes from others about the person
In Japan, one lone voice persisted in hailing the greatness of Kori long after his early death. Mishima Yukio saw in Kori’s plays the essence of tragedy. Mishima rated Kori as the natural successor to such classic Japanese tragedians as Zeami, Chikamatsu, and Mori Ogai. Mishima’s Modern Noh Plays was written in implicit homage to Kori and stands today as a continuation of many of the themes that Kori reworked so successfully in his dramas. Shiga Naoya concluded his reminiscence of Kori with his regret that he had let Kori go to England. "Kori should have stayed and worked in Japan. If he had, he might not have died so young.’ Kori’s early death was undeniably tragic, but given his long history of sickness and the fact that he received the best medical treatment available at the time, his premature death would have been unavoidable whether he had been in Japan or Europe. Had Kori never left Japan, he might now be known as a renowned writer of the Shirakaba School but because he left for Europe and Britain, we have The Toils of Yoshimoto, arguably the greatest dramatic achievement by a Japanese playwright ".
