Nagatsuka Takashi: Life and Major Works

A poet and novelist born in 1879 to a wealthy farming family in Kunjuku Village, Yūki District, Ibaraki Prefecture (now part of Jōsō). He fell ill and dropped out of middle school, and pursued waka poetry while convalescing. In 1900 he knocked on Masaoka Shiki's door and joined the Negishi Tanka Society, learning the new style of tanka grounded in "shasei," sketching from life. After Shiki's death he carried on his poetic style, and, together with Itō Sachio and others, played a central role as a poet for the magazine "Araragi." His sketching eye extended to prose as well, and he published stories set in his home village's farming community, such as "Imohori" ("Digging Potatoes"), "Kaigyōi" ("The Country Doctor"), and "Taijū to Sono Inu" ("Taijū and His Dog"), in "Hototogisu." The novel "Tsuchi" ("The Soil"), serialized in the "Tokyo Asahi Shimbun" in 1910 with the backing of Natsume Sōseki, depicts the lives of poor tenant farmers through thoroughgoing sketch-based realism, and is regarded as the work that established Japanese peasant literature. In his later years he suffered from laryngeal tuberculosis and continued treatment in various places before dying in 1915 at the age of 35. His tanka collection is "Hari no Gotoku" ("Like a Needle").