Yoshii Isamu - Literary Career

Literary Career

Yoshii left Myōjō to form a new group, Pan no Kai, together with Kitahara Hakushu due to their shared attraction of romanticism and aestheticism. In 1909, with the patronage of Mori Ōgai, Yoshii brought out a new literary magazine, Subaru.

In 1910, Yoshii published his first collection of tanka, Sakehogai, (Revelry) describing the joys and sorrows of a young poet given to wine and women. This established his name firmly in poetry circles and was followed by other tanka anthologies such as Sakujitsu made (Until Yesterday), Gion kashu (Gion Verses 1915), and Tokyo kōtō shū (Collection from the Tokyo Red-Light District, 1916).

Yoshii was also interested in the Shingeki (New Theater) movement. His first stage play (actually a collection of eleven one-act plays), called Gogo Sanji (3 pm), was published in Subaru in 1911, marking his debut as a playwright. This was followed by pieces such as Yumesuke to So to (Yumesuke and the Monk), and Kyo Geinin (Comic Artist).

While drifting around Shikoku, Kyūshū, and Kyoto, he joined the Radio Drama Kenkyukai with Kubota Mantarō at the request of Tokyo Broadcasting Corporation (later NHK), which started broadcasting radio programs in 1925. In the same year, he released scripts for radio dramas, such as Saigo no Seppun (The Last Kiss), Gekijo Iriguchi no Hanjikan (Half an Hour at the Theater Door), and Kamome no Shigai (Dead Seagull). In 1927, his play Ame no Yobanashi (Night Stories in the Rain) about a melancholic traveling performer wandering around the country was broadcast as a radio drama. The story proved very popular and gained Yoshii a wide following in the early days of radio.

In his later years, Yoshii lived in a house at the base of Mount Hiei in Kyoto, and was a frequent visitor to the Gion entertainment district. Every year on November 8, a festival is held in his memory, where the geisha and maiko of the Gion district lay flowers before a monument with his verse:

No matter what they say,
I love Gion.
Even in my sleep
The sound of water
Flows beneath my pillow

In 1948, Yoshii was appointed to be a poetry selector for the Imperial Household's New Year poetry reading. He died in 1960 at the age of 74. His grave is at the Aoyama Reien in Tokyo.