Takayama Chogyū

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

In this Japanese name, the surname is Takayama.
Takayama Chogyū
Tsuruoka, Yamagata, Japan
Died24 December 1902(1902-12-24) (aged 31)
Chigasaki, Kanagawa, Japan
OccupationWriter
Genrenovels, art history, Buddhist philosophy

Takayama Chogyū (高山 樗牛, Saitō Rinjirō (斎藤 林次郎) 28 February 1871 – 24 December 1902) was a Japanese writer and literary critic. He influenced

Meiji period with his blend of romantic individualism, concepts of self-realization, aesthetics, and nationalism
. However, many of Chogyū's works seem cryptic to readers today, due to the archaic style he employed.

Early life

Chogyū was born in what is now the city of

Shōnai Domain, who found employment with the police after the Meiji Restoration
. At the age of two he was adopted by his aunt's family.

In 1887 he entered high school in

Thomas Hill Green
's concepts of self-realization and nationalism.

Career and life

Chogyū entered and won a fiction contest sponsored by

military conscription
.

In 1896, Chogyū returned to Sendai to teach English and logic at a prestigious high school. A student revolt the following year forced him give up teaching to edit a literary magazine, and he returned to Tokyo. It was at this time that he married Satō Sugi.

During the surge of

ultra-nationalism that enveloped Japan in the wake of the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895 and the Triple Intervention, Chogyū wrote about his identity as a Japanese. Chogyū wrote patriotic articles emphasizing the oneness of the Emperor with his subjects. He also praised the concept of individualism as described in the writings of Walt Whitman. He was also an advocate of Pan-Asianism, asserting that the general trend of western civilization was that of racial nationalism, and that any alliances with Western nations would yield eventually to competition, if not a racial war. However, Chogyū later expressed concern with Japanese militarism
.

In 1898, while a lecturer at Waseda University, Chogyū asserted that the merit of historical paintings was in the beauty of the painting itself, which revealed the idealized beauty, or aesthetics of a historical period. He published Kinsei Bigaku (Modern Aesthetics) in 1899, presenting theories somewhat at odds with Mori Ōgai's Outline of Aesthetics.

In 1900,

Tokyo Imperial University, writing about Asuka period
art. The work left him exhausted.

Health decline and death

As sea air was thought to be helpful for lung ailments, Chogyū moved from Tokyo to the seaside resort towns of

Kamakura in an effort to cure his disease. With the likelihood of recovery increasingly remote, he turned his attention the teachings of the 13th-century Buddhist leader Nichiren. He continued to write, but on religious philosophy, especially Nichirenism. However, his condition worsened and he died on 24 December 1902 at a hospital in nearby Chigasaki. He lived in a house within the precincts of Kamakura's Hase-dera
during the last year of his life, and his funeral rites were at the temple.

His grave is located at Ryuge-ji, a temple in Shimizu, Shizuoka Prefecture. The inscription on the grave is from one of his writings: "Obviously we should transcend the present."

Although Chogyū's literary career spanned a mere six years, he had a major impact on other Japanese writers; he is largely unknown outside Japan.

References

External links


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