Inoue Kenkabo
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| Kenkabo Inoue | |
 Inoue Kenkabo |
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| Born: | 1870 Yamaguchi prefecture, Japan |
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| Died: | 1934 Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan |
| Occupation: | writer and journalist |
| Genres: | poetry. essays |
| Influences: | Romain Rolland, Henri Barbusse |
Kenkabo Inoue (井上剣花坊 Inoue Kenkabo?)(1870 – 1934) was the pen-name of a journalist and writer of senryu (short, humorous) verse in late Meiji, Taisho and early Showa period Japan. His real name was Inoue Koichi.
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[edit] Early life
Kenkabo was born in Hagi city, Yamaguchi prefecture, as the son of an ex-samurai of the Choshu domain. He was largely self-educated.
After working part time as an elementary school teacher and a reporter for a local newspaper, he moved to Tokyo in 1900 and began writing the arts column for the literary magazine, Myogi. Three years later, he joined the Nihon Shimbun newspaper as a reporter. Using the pen name, Kenkabo, he began a column called Shindai yanagidaru, which advocated a new style of senryu poetry.
[edit] Literary career
In 1905, Kenkabo founded a poetry group called Ryusonji Senryu Kai, which brought out its own short-lived literary magazine called Senryu. After retiring from working as an employee of the Nihon Shimbun newspaper, Kenkabo continued to manage the senryu columns of the Kokumin Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun newspapers and later resurrected Senryu in 1912, renaming it Taisho Senryu, to mark the beginning of the new Taisho period.
With the arrival of the Showa period in 1926, he again changed the name of the magazine, this time to Senryujin.
He also wrote the essays, Proletariat Literature and Bourgeois Literature, and Senryu odo ron (Royal Way of Senryu), and contributed pieces to the magazines, Nihon oyobi Nihonjin (Japan and the Japanese) and Kaizo (Reconstruction).
Kenkabo's senryu are characterized by their grandeur and generosity. Kenkabo had disciples all around Japan, including Kawakami Santaro, Murata Shugyo and Kijiro (novelist Yoshikawa Eiji's senryu pen name). His works include Shin senryu rokusen ku (Six Thousand New Senryu), Senryu o tsukuru hito ni (For Senryu Poets) and Ko senryu shinzui (The Essence of Classical Senryu).
