Mutsuo Takahashi
Mutsuo Takahashi | |
---|---|
essayist | |
Nationality | Japanese |
Period | Contemporary |
Genre | Poetry, novel |
Mutsuo Takahashi (高橋 睦郎, Takahashi Mutsuo, born December 15, 1937) is one of the most prominent and prolific
Early life
Born in 1937 in the rural southern island of
Due to his grandparents' poverty, Takahashi spent much time with extended family and other neighbors. Especially important to him during this time was an uncle that served a pivotal figure in Takahashi's development, serving as a masculine role model. Again, however, historical fate intervened [
After Takahashi's mother returned from the mainland,
In his memoirs[1] and interviews,[3] Takahashi has mentioned that in the time he spent with his schoolmates, he became increasingly aware of his own sexual attraction towards men. This became a common subject in the first book of poetry he published in 1959.[4]
Early writing
After a bout of tuberculosis, Takahashi graduated from the
About the same time, Takahashi sent the collection to the novelist Yukio Mishima who contacted him and offered to use his name to help promote Takahashi's work. The two shared a close relationship and friendship that lasted until Mishima's suicide in 1970. Other close friends Takahashi made about this time include Tatsuhiko Shibusawa who translated the Marquis de Sade into Japanese, the surreal poet Chimako Tada who shared Takahashi's interest in classical Greece, the poet Shigeo Washisu who was also interested in the classics and the existential ramifications of homoeroticism. With the latter two writers, Takahashi cooperated to create the literary journal The Symposium (饗宴, Kyōen) named after Plato's famous dialogue.[4] This interest in eroticism and existentialism reflects a larger existential trend in the literature and culture of Japan during the 1960s and 1970s.[4]
Homoeroticism remained an important theme in his poetry written in free verse through the 1970s, including the long poem Ode (頌, Homeuta), which the publisher Winston Leyland has called "the great gay poem of the 20th century."[5] Many of these early works have been translated into English by Hiroaki Sato[6][7][8] and reprinted in the collection Partings at Dawn: An Anthology of Japanese Gay Literature.[9]
About the same time, Takahashi started writing prose. In 1970, he published Twelve Views from the Distance about his early life and the novella The Sacred Promontory (聖なる岬, Sei naru misaki) about his own erotic awakening. In 1972, he wrote A Legend of a Holy Place (聖所伝説, Seisho densetsu), a surrealistic novella inspired by his own experiences on a forty-day trip to
Later literary career
Around 1975, Takahashi's writing began to explore a wider range of themes, such as the destiny of mankind, Takahashi's travels to many nations around the world, and relationships in the modern world. It was with this broadening of themes that Takahashi's poetry began to earn an increasingly broad audience.
As with his early writing, Takahashi's later writing shows a high degree of erudition, including a thorough awareness of the history of world literature and art. In fact, many of his collections published from the 1980s onward, include poems either dedicated to or about important authors around the world, including Jorge Luis Borges, Jean Genet, Ezra Pound, and Chimako Tada,—each a homage to an important literary predecessor. For instance, in 2010, Takahashi has also produced a slim book of poems to accompany a 2010 exhibition of the work of the American artist Joseph Cornell.
Although Takahashi has been most visibly active in the realm of free verse poetry, he has also written traditional Japanese verse (both
Since the broadening of Takahashi's themes in the 1970s and his retirement from the advertising agency in the 1980s, the pace of his publication has increased. He has been the recipient of a number of important literary prizes in Japan, such as the Rekitei Prize, the
Takahashi presently lives in the seaside city of
See also
References
- ^ a b c d Takahashi Mutsuo, Jū-ni no enkei (Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 1970). Translated by Jeffrey Angles as Twelve Views from the Distance (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012).
- ^ a b Takahashi Mutsuo, "The Snow of Memory," trans. Jeffrey Angles, Japan: A Traveler's Literary Companion (Berkeley: Whereabouts Press, 2006), pp.190-203.
- ^ Takahashi Mutsuo and Jeffrey Angles, "Interview with Takahashi Mutsuo," June 9, 2005, trans. Katsuhiko Sugunuma, Intersections: Gender, History, and Culture in the Asian Context [1].
- ^ a b c d Jeffrey Angles, "Penisism and the Eternal Hole: (Homo)Eroticism and Existential Exploration in the Early Poetry of Takahashi Mutsuo," Intersections: Gender, History, and Culture in the Asian Context
- ^ Winston Leyland, Blurb on the back cover of Partings at Dawn: An Anthology of Japanese Gay Literature, ed. Stephen D. Miller, San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1996.
- ^ Mutsuo Takahashi, Poems of a Penisist, trans. Hiroaki Sato, Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1975. Republished Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.
- ^ Mutsuo Takahashi, A Bunch of Keys: Selected Poems, trans. Hiroaki Sato, Trumansburg, NY: Crossing Press, 1984.
- ^ Mutsuo Takahashi, Sleeping, Sinning, Falling, trans. Hiroaki Sato, San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1992.
- ^ Stephen D. Miller, ed., Partings at Dawn: An Anthology of Japanese Gay Literature, San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1996.
- ^ Jeffrey Angles, "On the Limits of Liberation: Takahashi Mutsuo's Critique of Queer America," Travel in Japanese Representational Culture: Proceedings of the Association for Japanese Literary Studies, ed. Eiji Sekine, West Lafayette, IN: Association for Japanese Literary Studies, 2007, pp. 245-54.
- ^ Two excerpts from this book have been published in English: Takahashi Mutsuo, "Zen's Pilgrimage: Introduction", trans. Jeffrey Angles, Harrington Gay Men's Fiction Quarterly vol 2, issue 3 (2000): pp. 53-76 and Takahashi Mutsuo, "Zen's Pilgrimage: Conclusion," Queer Dharma: Voices of Gay Buddhists, vol. 2, ed. Winston Leyland, San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press, 1999, pp. 198-222.
- ^ https://www.worldcat.org/title/1932299 Retrieved January 22, 2023.
Bibliography
Translations into English
- Takahashi, Mutsuo (1975, republished 2012), Poems of a Penisist, trans. ISBN 978-0-816679-72-0.
- Takahashi, Mutsuo (1984), A Bunch of Keys: Selected Poems, trans. ISBN 978-0-89594-144-2.
- Takahashi Mutsuo (1996), Selections, trans. Stephen D. Miller, ISBN 978-0-940567-18-4.
- Takahashi, Mutsuo (1992), Sleeping, Sinning, Falling, trans. ISBN 978-0-87286-268-5.
- Takahashi Mutsuo (1999),"Zen's Pilgrimage: Conclusion," trans. ISBN 978-0-940567-22-1.
- Takahashi Mutsuo (2000), "Zen's Pilgrimage: Introduction," trans. Jeffrey Angles, Harrington Gay Men's Fiction Quarterly, vol. 2, no. 3: 53-76. ISSN 1522-3140.
- Takahashi Mutsuo (2006), "The Snow of Memory" [Excerpt from Twelve Views from the Distance], trans. Jeffrey Angles, Japan: A Traveler's Literary Companion, Berkeley: Whereabouts Press, pp. 190–203.
- Takahashi, Mutsuo (2006), On Two Shores: New and Selected Poems, trans. Mitsuko Ohno and Frank Sewell, Dublin: Dedalus Press. ISBN 978-1-904556-49-7.
- Takahashi, Mutsuo (2006), We of Zipangu: Selected Poems, trans. ISBN 978-1-904614-04-3.
- Takahashi Mutsuo (2006), Five Poems, trans. Jeffrey Angles, Intersections: Gender, History, and Culture in the Asian Context [2].
- Takahashi Mutsuo (2012), Twelve Views from the Distance, trans. ISBN 978-0-816679-36-2.
Secondary sources
- Stephen D. Miller, West Lafayette, IN: Association for Japanese Literary Studies, pp. 389–404.
- Angles, Jeffrey (2006), "Penisism and the Eternal Hole: (Homo)Eroticism and Existential Exploration in the Early Poetry of Takahashi Mutsuo," Intersections: Gender, History, and Culture in the Asian Context [3].
- Angles, Jeffrey (2007), "On the Limits of Liberation: Takahashi Mutsuo's Critique of Queer America," Travel in Japanese Representational Culture: Proceedings of the Association for Japanese Literary Studies, ed. Eiji Sekine, West Lafayette, IN: Association for Japanese Literary Studies, pp. 245–54.
- Takahashi Mutsuo and Jeffrey Angles (2006), "Interview with Takahashi Mutsuo [June 9, 2005]," trans. Katsuhiko Sugunuma, Intersections: Gender, History, and Culture in the Asian Context [4].
External links
Videos of readings
- Video showing Takahashi reading from his memoirs Twelve Views from the Distance on YouTube in Michiganin 2014. Subtitles in English.
- Video showing Takahashi giving a poetry reading in 1995 on . Subtitles in Spanish.
- Video showing Takahashi giving a poetry reading in 2008 on YouTubeat the Tokyo Poetry Festival.
- A first video showing Takahashi giving a poetry reading in 2009 on YouTube at the International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong. Takahashi's reading begins around 2:50 in the video. No subtitles.
- A second video showing Takahashi giving a poetry reading in 2009 on YouTube at the International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong. No subtitles.
Poems online
- Translations of five of Takahashi's poems by Jeffrey Angles.
- Translation of the poem "Myself with Motorcycle" by Hiroaki Sato. (Click on the grey Japanese title for the original Japanese text.)
Excerpts from the memoir Twelve Views from the Distance
Articles
- Article at GLBTQ, an online encyclopedia of gay culture about some of Takahashi's early homoerotic literature.
- Comments about translating Takahashi by Hiroaki Sato.
- Japanese-language Wikipedia article Contains a list in Japanese of some of Takahashi's publications.