Books By Sakutaro Hagiwara - Author

Sakutaro Hagiwara (1886-1942) was born in Maebashi, Gunma, the eldest of six children. His father was a successful physician, and Hagiwara enjoyed a sheltered and pampered childhood. At age fifteen he discovered literature and began writing classical tanka verse and publishing in literary magazines. As a young student he moved frequently throughout Japan, unable to finish college, prone to illness, and tormented by youthful lust. In Tokyo, he learned to play the mandolin and guitar, and upon returning to his hometown founded a musicians' club called Gondola Western Music Society. By 1913, Hagiwara had abandoned classical metrical schemes in his poetry for free verse. He became a founding member of the Mermaid Poetry Society, worked as an editor at literary magazines, and in 1917 published his first book of poetry, Howling at the Moon, which was an immediate success and transformed modern Japanese verse forever. An arranged marriage in 1919 produced two daughters and ended ten years