Hototogisu (magazine)

Hototogisu (ホトトギス "Lesser Cuckoo") is a Japanese literary magazine focusing primarily on haiku. Founded in 1897, it was responsible for the spread of modern haiku among the Japanese public[1] and is now Japan's most prestigious and long-lived haiku periodical.[2]

History

Hototogisu was founded in 1897 in Matsuyama by Yanagihara Kyokudō, who edited it under the direction of Masaoka Shiki.[3] It soon became the leading forum for Shiki's Nippon school of haiku. The following year, the magazine's headquarters moved to Tokyo and its editorship was taken over by Takahama Kyoshi.[3] At the same time, the magazine's scope was expanded to include tanka and haibun as well has haiku, and Shiki began publishing essays in his shaseibun ("sketch from life prose") style.[4] It had established itself as Japan's leading haiku magazine by this time, and the first Tokyo edition sold out on its first day.[5]

Following Shiki's death in 1902, the magazine's focus shifted to the fiction of modernist writers such as Natsume Sōseki, but in 1912 Kyoshi once again began including haiku.[6]

In 1916, Kyoshi initiated the "Kitchen Miscellanies" column in Hototogisu to promote the writings of women haiku poets such as Sugita Hisajo.[7][8]

When Kyoshi died in 1959, editorship passed to his son Toshio.[9] Since 1979, the editor has been Teiko Inahata (b. 1931), Kyoshi's grand-daughter.[1][10][11]

Notable contributors

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Hirai 2003 p7
  2. ↑ Ueda 2003 x
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Beichman 2002 p26
  4. ↑ Beichman 2002 p27
  5. ↑ Beichman 2002 p152
  6. ↑ Higginson 1985 p27
  7. ↑ Rodd, Laurel Rasplica. "Meiji Women's Poetry" in Copeland, Rebecca L. and Melek Ortabasi (eds.) The Modern Murasaki: Writing by Women of Meiji Japan. Columbia University Press, 2006. ISBN 9780231137751 p32
  8. ↑ Ueda 2003 xxvi
  9. ↑ Higginson 1985 p28
  10. ↑ Donegan, Patricia. Haiku Mind: 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness and Open Your Heart. Shambhala Publications, 2010. ISBN 9781590307588 p100
  11. ↑ Ueda 2003 xxxii

References