Chūya Nakahara

Chūya Nakahara (中原 中也), born Chūya Kashimura (柏村 中也), was a Japanese poet active during the early Shōwa period.

Originally shaped by Dada and other forms of European (mainly French) experimental poetry, he was one of the leading renovators of Japanese poetry.

Although he died at the young age of 30, he wrote more than 350 poems throughout his life.

In Nakahara's earliest years, his father was sent to Hiroshima and Kanazawa where the family followed, only returning to Yamaguchi in 1914.

It was the death of his younger brother Tsugurō in 1915 when he was 8 years old, which awakened him to literature.

Grief-driven, he turned to compose poetry.

In 1917, Kensuke established his own clinic in the location where nowadays stands the Nakahara Chūya Memorial Hall.

Since his parents had not been blessed with children for six years after their marriage, and because they had no children in the Nakahara family's hometown, they were delighted with the birth of their first son and celebrated it for three days.

As the eldest son of a prominent doctor, Nakahara was expected to become one himself.

Due to the high expectations of his father, Nakahara was given a very strict education, which also prevented him from enjoying an ordinary childhood.

Worried about the public morals of the town, Kensuke forbid his son from playing outside with children from a different class to their own.

Another example of these restrictions is that, unlike his younger brothers, he was not allowed to bathe in the river for fear that he would drown.

As he grew up, severe punishments were inflicted upon him; a common one was being made to stand upright facing the wall.

Any sudden move would cause to receive a burn on the heel with a cigarette ember.

However, the biggest punishment was being confined to sleep in the barn, which Chūya received dozens of times compared to his brothers.

This was intended to prepare him to follow Kensuke's footsteps and to become the head of the family.

As a middle schooler, Nakahara had excellent grades and was called a prodigy child.

He submitted his first three verses to a women's magazine and local newspaper in 1920 when he was still in elementary school.

In the same year, he passed the entrance examination to Yamaguchi Junior High School with brilliant results.

It was from this point onwards that he started to rebel against his father's strictness.

He no longer studied and his grades began to drop as he became increasingly absorbed by literature.

Kensuke was extremely afraid of the influence of literature on his son.

Once, having found a work of fiction Nakahara had hidden, he severely scolded him and, once again, confined him in the barn.

It was around this time when Nakahara also began to drink and smoke, making his grades go even lower.

In 1923, he failed his third-year examination.

It is said that Nakahara invited a friend to his study room, broke the answer sheet, and chanted "hurrah".

The failure seems to have been deliberate.

For as long as he did not fail, he was bound to remain under his strict parents' surveillance.

On the other hand, Kensuke received the news with utter shock at what meant to him a deep humiliation.

He resorted once more to striking his son and keeping him in the barn on the cold night of March.

Regardless of this, Nakahara insisted on not going back to this school.

This culminated in his father's defeat, ultimately leading to an apology for his “educational policy”.

In light of these events, he was transferred to the Ritsumeikan Middle School in Kyoto, where Nakahara begin to live alone but still, and until the end of his days, at the expense of his family.

In Kyoto he found many of the influences that would ultimately shape him as a poet.

He read Shinkichi Takahashi's Dadaist poetry, which shocked him into starting to write again.

This artistic movement became a part of his poetic lifestyle and later earned him the nickname “Dada-san”.

In winter he met the actress Yasuko Hasegawa, three years his senior, and in April 1924 they began living together.

Many called him the "Japanese Rimbaud" for his affinities with the French poet whose poems he translated in 1934.

Chūya Nakahara was born in Yamaguchi, where his father, Kensuke Kashimura, was a highly decorated army doctor.

Kensuke married Fuku Nakahara and was adopted by the Nakahara family shortly after the birth of their son, officially changing their last name to Nakahara.