Kunio Tsukamoto, a leading figure in modern tanka, has died. It feels as though an era has ended. At hand now, I have only “Ryokushoku Kenkyū” and “Nihonjin Reika.” I must also have had a first edition of “Suigin Densetsu,” but it has probably become lost somewhere among the cardboard boxes containing my father’s books.
When I opened the elaborately designed “Ryokushoku Kenkyū,” a sheet of yellow paper fell out. It was a letter from Tsukamoto to my father, dated 25 Oct. ’65, with a seal stamped below.
From “Ryokushoku Kenkyū: Section,” final poem
The soul’s summer: how many times its shadows break away—an iron ladder reaching the bottom of the pool
June 10, 2005 11:06
Kunio Tsukamoto, a tanka poet who had a major influence on the postwar tanka world as a standard-bearer of avant-garde tanka and a former professor at Kinki University, died of respiratory failure on the 9th. He was 84 years old. The wake will be held on the 12th at 6 p.m., and the funeral on the 13th at 11:30 a.m., at Higashi-Osaka Gyokusen-in, 1-18-2 Aramoto-Nishi, Higashi-Osaka, Osaka Prefecture.
(asahi.com)
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