Jun Ishikawa
| Jun Ishikawa 石川 淳 |
|
|---|---|
Ishikawa Jun
|
|
| Born |
7 March 1899 Tokyo, Japan |
| Died | 29 December 1987 (aged 88) Tokyo, Japan |
| Occupation | Writer, translator and literary critic |
| Genre | novels, short stories, poetry, essays |
| Literary movement | Buraiha |
| Notable works | Song of Mars |
Jun Ishikawa (石川 淳 Ishikawa Jun?, 7 March 1899 – 29 December 1987) was the pen name of a modernist author, translator and literary critic active in Shōwa period Japan. His real name (written in the same kanji) was Ishikawa Kiyoshi.
Ishikawa was born in the Asakusa district of Tokyo as the son of a banker. He graduated from the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages (東京外国語学校, later Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) with a degree in French literature. After graduation, he served a tour of duty in the Imperial Japanese Navy from 1922–1923, following which he was hired by Fukuoka University as a professor of French literature. His early career involved translating works such as Anatole France’s Le lys rouge and author André Gide’s L'Immoraliste into Japanese.
The next year, he was resigned from the university due to controversy over his participation in student protest movements. He returned to Tokyo and began a bohemian existence, living out of cheap pensions while translating Andre Gide's Les Caves du Vatican and Molière's Le Misanthrope and Tartuffe.
His literary career began in 1935, when he began writing a series of short stories, starting with Kajin (佳人, Lady), and Hinkyu mondo (貧窮 問答, Dialog on Poverty) in which he depicted the struggles of a solitary writer attempting to create a Parnassian fiction. In 1936 he won the fourth annual Akutagawa Prize for his story Fugen (普賢, The Bodhisattva).
...
Wikipedia