Santōka Taneda

Taneda Santōka (種田 山頭火^?, birth name: Taneda Shōichi 種田 正一; 3 December 1882 – 11 October 1940) was the pen-name of a Japanese author and haiku poet. He is known for his free verse haiku.

Santōka was born in a village on the southwestern tip of Honshū, Japan’s main island, to a wealthy land-owning family. When he was eleven his mother committed suicide by throwing herself into the family well. Though the exact reason for her action is unknown, according to Santōka’s diaries his mother had finally reached the point where she could no longer live with her husband’s philandering. Following the incident, Santōka was raised by his grandmother.

In 1902, he entered Waseda University in Tokyo as a student of literature. While there, he began drinking heavily, and in 1904, at the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War, he dropped out of school. The documented reason was “nervous breakdown,” which some believe to be a euphemism for frequent and severe drunkenness. By that time his father Takejirō was in such dire financial straits that he could barely afford to pay his son’s tuition.

In 1906, Taneda father and son sold off family land in order to open a sake brewery. In 1909 his father arranged for Santōka to marry Sato Sakino, a girl from a neighboring village. In his diaries, Santōka confesses that the sight of his mother’s corpse being raised from her watery grave had forever tarnished his relationship with women. In 1910 Sakino gave birth to a son, Ken.

In 1911, he began publishing translations of Ivan Turgenev and Guy de Maupassant in the literary journal Seinen (青年, Youth) under the pen name Santōka, meaning "Mountain-top Fire". That same year he joined his area’s local haiku group. At that time, his haiku mostly adhered to the traditional syllabic format, though some were hypersyllabic, for example:

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