Masaoka Shiki (redirected from Masaoka Siki)

Masaoka Shiki (mä`sä`ō`kä shē`kē), 1867–1902, Japanese waka and haiku poet. Founder of the literary magazine Hototogisu and patron to a number of young poets, Shiki played a leading role in the revival of the traditional waka and haiku forms. He advocated a realistic, descriptive poetic style, which he regarded as the original spirit of Japanese verse, and his poetic treatises greatly influenced the Japanese literary world in its quest to define modern Japanese modes of expression. Although Shiki's poor health rendered him bedridden in his later years, he maintained an active literary career until his premature death of spinal tuberculosis.

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Masaoka Shiki 

(pseudonym of Masaoka Tsunenori). Born Sept. 17, 1867, in Matsuyama; died Sept. 19, 1902, in Tokyo. Japanese poet and theoretician of verse.

Masaoka studied in the department of Japanese philology at the University of Tokyo. He began to appear in print in 1885. In his theoretical works, Conversations of Dassaishooku About Haiku (1893), Principles of Haiku (1895), and Epistle to the Tanka Poets (1898), Masaoka called for a revitalization of the traditional forms of Japanese poetry, tanka and haiku. In 1898 he began to publish the journal Hototogisu (The Cuckoo), around which the proponents of the new poetry grouped themselves. Masaoka’s verses of 1885-96 became part of the five-volume collection Winter Mountains and Naked Trees (1925), which reflected the author’s artistic evolution from the traditional style to realistic poetry.

Masaoka’s innovative approach manifested itself in his truthful depiction of human experiences and realistic perception of nature. He exerted a profound influence on the development of modern Japanese poetry.

WORKS

Masaoka Shiki zenshu, vols. 1-22. Tokyo, 1929-31.
In Russian translation:
In Iaponskaia poeziia. Moscow, 1956.

REFERENCES

Istoriia sovremennoi iaponskoi literatury. Moscow, 1961.
Grigor’eva, T., and V. Logunova. Iaponskaia literatura, Moscow, 1964.
Samukawa Sokotsu. Masaoka Shiki-no sekai. Tokyo, 1956.

K. REKHO