Masao Kume
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Masao Kume | |
---|---|
Kamakura, Japan | |
Occupation | writer |
Genre | haiku poetry, novels, stage plays |
Notable works | Tsuki yori no shisha (Messenger from the Moon, 1933) |
Masao Kume (久米 正雄, Kume Masao, 23 November 1891 – 1 March 1952) was a
Early life
Kume was born in
Literary career
Kume exhibited a talent for
Kume's debut as a playwright came with Gyunyuya no Kyōdai ("Milkman’s Siblings"), which was staged in 1914 and proved to be very popular. By 1916, he had published his first novel Chichi no Shi ("My Father's Death") and a play Abukuma Shinju ("Love Suicides at Abukuma"). In 1918 he founded the Kokumin Bungeikai ("People's Arts Movement") with Kaoru Osanai and Mantarō Kubota. His fame as a novelist grew when he wrote a series of stories, including Hotaru Gusa ("Firefly Weeds"), Hasen ("Shipwreck"), and Bosan ("Visit to a Grave"), about his unrequited love for Natsume Sōseki's eldest daughter (he proposed to her via her parents, as was the practice at the time, but she surprised everyone by announcing her love for Kume's classmate and close friend Yuzuru Matsuoka instead). In 1925, Kume wrote an essay, Shishōsetsu to Shinkyō shōsetsu ("The I-Novel and the Mental State Novel"), which became a classic in defining those two literary forms. In 1933, he wrote a melodramatic novel Tsuki yori no shisha ("Messenger from the Moon"), which was a major best-seller. Kume was arrested in Kamakura in 1933, along with fellow literati Matsutarō Kawaguchi and Ton Satomi for illegal card gambling. In 1938, Kume joined the Pen butai (lit. "Pen corps"), a government organisation consisting of authors who travelled the front during the Second Sino-Japanese War to write favourably of Japan's war efforts in China,[1][2] and later the Nihon bungaku hōkokukai ("Patriotic Association for Japanese Literature"), led by Sohō Tokutomi and himself.[3]
Life in Kamakura
Kume relocated from
Kume suffered from
See also
- Japanese literature
- List of Japanese authors
References
- ^ "ペン部隊". Kotobank (in Japanese). Retrieved 24 July 2023.
- ISBN 9780367355739.
- ^ "日本文学報国会". Kotobank (in Japanese). Retrieved 24 July 2023.
- Mack, Edward. Manufacturing Modern Japanese Literature: Publishing, Prizes, and the Ascription of Literary Value. Duke University Press (2010) ISBN 0822391651
- Suzuki, Tomi. Narrating the Self: Fictions of Japanese Modernity. Stanford University Press (1997). ISBN 0-8047-3162-4.
- Tsuruta, Kinya. Akutagawa Ryunosuke and I-Novelists. Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 25, No. 1/2 (1970), pp. 13–27
External links
- e-texts of works at Aozora Bunko (Japanese site)
- Japanese site with photo of, and by, Kume Masao