Takeshi Kaikō
Kaikō Takeshi 開高 健 | |
---|---|
Kaikō Takeshi | |
Born | (1930-12-30)30 December 1930 Tennoji-ku, Osaka, Japan |
Died | 9 December 1989(1989-12-09) (aged 58) Chigasaki, Kanagawa, Japan |
Occupation | Writer, journalist |
Genre | novels, short stories, essays |
Takeshi Kaikō (開高 健, Kaikō Takeshi, also "Kaikō Ken", 30 December 1930 – 9 December 1989) was a prominent post-World War II Japanese novelist, short-story writer, essayist, literary critic, and television documentary writer. He was distinguished by his knowledge, intellect, sense of humor and conversational skills, and although his style has been criticized as wordy and obtuse, he was one of the more popular Japanese writers in the late Shōwa period.
Early life
Kaikō was born in the Tennoji Ward of Osaka as the son of an elementary school teacher. In 1948, he enrolled in the Law Department of Osaka City University, but was often absent from class, as he had to take a variety of part-time jobs in order to pay for his tuition. While in school, rather than study law he was sidetracked by the works of Motojirō Kajii, Mitsuharu Kaneko and Atsushi Nakajima. He also translated the works of Sherwood Anderson and Louis Aragon into Japanese. He graduated in 1953 and moved to Tokyo, where he took a job with Kotobukiya (the present Suntory), where he worked in the public-relations department.
He married Yōko Maki, a poet.
Literary career
Kaikō published his first work, Na no nai machi (Nameless City, 1953) in the literary magazine Kindai Bungaku soon after his move to Tokyo. It was largely ignored by critics. However, his second work, a short story titled Panniku (Panic, 1957) published in the Shin Nippon Bunkaku, caused a sensation for its unusual concept and style. It was a story about a dedicated forester in a rural prefecture of Japan, who struggles against government incompetence and corruption. Kaikō wrote the story as a satirical allegory comparing human beings to mice.
Kaikō won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1957 with his Hadaka no ōsama (The Naked King), a story critical of the pressures placed on school children by Japan's educational system.
Kaikō is considered a leftist activist, respected in many Indochinese countries, in particular, for his vocal opposition to Japan's support of the United States' policies in Indochina in the 1960s. He was one of the founders of the Beheiren (Betonamu ni heiwa o! Shimin rengo), or the League for Peace in Vietnam. This activity was related to his experience as a war correspondent in Vietnam with the Asahi Shimbun; he was briefly imprisoned by the Viet Cong. These experiences translated into his novel, Kagayakeru yami (Into a Black Sun, 1968), an account of a Japanese journalist experiencing first-hand the life of the Americans and South Vietnamese troops in Vietnam. The novel won the prestigious Mainichi Book Award.
However, Kaikō had a wide range of topics in his repertory. Natsu no yami (Darkness in Summer, 1971) was essentially a romance between a reporter and an expatriate Japanese woman living in Europe.
Kaikō enriched the Japanese language with the word "apache", to denote scavengers of recyclables, described in his novel, Japan's Threepenny Opera.
Considered a gourmet, in his later years, Kaikō wrote numerous essays on food and drink, as well as appearing on food-related or fishing-related TV shows and in TV commercials.
He died of esophageal cancer. His grave is at the Shorei-in sub-temple of the Engaku-ji Temple complex, Kamakura, Kanagawa.
Legacy
His former house in Chigasaki, Kanagawa has been preserved as a memorial museum.
References
- Powell, Irena. Japanese Writer in Vietnam: The Two Wars of Kaiko Ken (1931-89). Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Feb., 1998), pp. 219–244
Bibliography
- Japan's Threepenny Opera, 1959.
- English translations
- Into a Black Sun, (English language edition: Kodansha America (1981). ISBN 0-87011-428-X
- Five Thousand Runaways Dodd, Mead (1987)
- Darkness in Summer (with Cecilia Segawa Seigle), Peter Owen (1989). ISBN 0-7206-0725-6
- Giants and Toys, in: Made in Japan and Other Japanese Business Novels, transl.: Tamae K. Prindle. (1990). ISBN 0-87332-772-1
- A Certain Voice in: Mother of Dreams and Other Short Stories, ed. by Makoto Ueda
External links
- Kaiko Takeshi Memorial Museum, Chigasaki, Kanagawa (Japanese site) Archived 2020-11-01 at the Wayback Machine
- Takeshi Kaiko's grave
- v
- t
- e
journalists
- R. W. Apple
- Peter Arnett
- Elizabeth Becker
- Homer Bigart
- Michael Birch
- Peter Braestrup
- Malcolm Browne
- Wilfred Burchett
- Dickey Chapelle
- Richard Dudman
- Robert Elegant
- Gloria Emerson
- Bernard Fall
- James Fenton
- Frances FitzGerald
- Sylvana Foa
- Joseph Galloway
- Martha Gellhorn
- H.D.S. Greenway
- Al Gore
- David Halberstam
- Michael Herr
- Marguerite Higgins
- Ward Just
- Takeshi Kaikō
- Peter Kann
- Stanley Karnow
- Donald Kirk
- Steve Kroft
- John Pilger
- Gareth Porter
- Robert Reguly
- John Sack
- Murray Sayle
- Jonathan Schell
- Sydney Schanberg
- Neil Sheehan
- Alexander Shimkin
- John Steinbeck IV
- Matthew V. Storin
- Jon Swain
- Richard Tregaskis
- Kate Webb
- Perry Deane Young
journalists
- Eddie Adams
- David Burnett
- Larry Burrows
- Robert Capa
- Gilles Caron
- Dickey Chapelle
- Charles Chellapah
- Neil Davis
- David Douglas Duncan
- Charles Eggleston
- Horst Faas
- Sean Flynn
- Chas Gerretsen
- Barbara Gluck
- Philip Jones Griffiths
- Dirck Halstead
- Henri Huet
- David Hume Kennerly
- Catherine Leroy
- Don McCullin
- Co Rentmeester
- Tim Page
- Al Rockoff
- Toshio Sakai
- Kyoichi Sawada
- Dick Swanson
- Dana Stone
- Francois Sully
- Shigeru Tamura
- Neal Ulevich
- Nick Ut
- Nik Wheeler
journalists
- Martin Bell
- Ed Bradley
- Charles Collingwood
- Walter Cronkite
- Murray Fromson
- Jeff Gralnick
- Max Hastings
- Bernard Kalb
- Peter Kalischer
- Douglas Kiker
- Jim Kincaid
- Steve Kroft
- Charles Kuralt
- John Laurence
- George Lewis
- Ike Pappas
- Julian Pettifer
- Bill Plante
- Dan Rather
- Harry Reasoner
- Clete Roberts
- Morley Safer
- Joe Schlesinger
- Pierre Schoendoerffer
- Bob Simon
- Richard Threlkeld