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Mokichi Saitō (斎藤 茂吉, Saitō Mokichi, May 14, 1882 - February 25, 1953) was a Japanese poet of the Taishō period, a member of the Araragi school of tanka, and a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist Shigeta Saitō (Japanese Misplaced Pages article) is his first son, the novelist Morio Kita is his second son and the essayist Yuka Saitō is his granddaughter.

Life

Mokichi was born in the village of Kanakame, now part of Kaminoyama, Yamagata in 1882. He attended Tokyo Imperial University Medical School and, upon graduation in 1911, joined the staff of Sugamo Hospital where he began his study of psychiatry. Mokichi resided in Europe from October 1921 to November 1924 where he completed further academic and research work in his chosen field of medicine; he studied at the Neurologischen Institute of Vienna University and later at the Deutschen Forschungsanstalt für Psychiatrie (Kaiser Wilhelm Institut) in Munich. He later directed Aoyama Hospital, a psychiatric facility. Mokichi was the family doctor of author Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and may have unknowingly played an indirect role in the latter’s 1927 suicide.

Literary Career

Mokichi studied tanka under Itō Sachio, a disciple of Masaoka Shiki and leader, after his master’s death, of the Negishi Tanka Society; Sachio also edited the society’s official journal Ashibi. This magazine, due to Sachio’s increasing commitment to other literary activities, was subsequently replaced by Araragi in 1908. The publication in 1913 of Mokichi’s first collection of tanka, Shakkō ("Red Light") was an immediate sensation with the broader public. The first edition collected the poet’s work from the years 1905-1913 and included 50 tanka sequences (rensaku), with the autobiographical "My Mother is Dying" (死にたまふ母, Shinitamau haha) being perhaps the most celebrated sequence in the book.

Mokichi’s career as a poet spanned almost 50 years. At the time of his death, he had published seventeen poetry collections which include “14,200 or so poems,” the collected works being overwhelmingly devoted to tanka. He received the Order of Culture in 1951.

Notes

1. Heinrich, p.3
2. Heinrich, pp.16, 20
3. Heinrich, pp. 37, 46.
4. Heinrich, pp.50-51, 69
5. Shinoda and Goldstein, p.59
6. Shinoda and Goldstein, pp.22-24.
7. Heinrich, p.14.
8. Shinoda and Goldstein, p.28.
9. Keene, p.61.
10. Shinoda and Goldstein, p.1.
11. Heinrich, pp.104-105.
12. Keene, p.61.
13. Shinoda and Goldstein, p.40.
14. Heinrich, p.79

References

• Heinrich, Amy Vladeck, 1983. Fragments of Rainbows: The Life and Poetry of Saitō Mokichi. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0231054287.
• Keene, Donald, 1999. Dawn to the West: A History of Japanese Literature, Volume 4 - Japanese Literature of the Modern Era (Poetry, Drama, Criticism). New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0231114394.
• Shinoda, Seishi and Sanford Goldstein, eds., 1989. Red Lights: Selected Tanka Sequences from Shakkō by Mokichi Saitō. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press. ISBN 0-911198-90-3.

Template:Persondata

• 1882 births
• 1953 deaths
• Japanese psychiatrists
• Japanese poets
• University of Tokyo alumni
• People from Yamagata Prefecture