Takahama Kyoshi (
1874-
1959) was, along with his friend
Kawahigashi Hekigodo, was one of the most prominent students of the great modern master of
Japanese haiku,
Masaoka Shiki. All three men were from
Matsuyama . Kyoshi was editor of
Hototogisu ("
cuckoo"), the magazine that was founded by Shiki and the experimental "
Nihon school" of poets.
After Shiki’s death in
1902, Kyoshi conceded the title of
Japan’s foremost haiku poet to Hekigodo and abandoned poetry for novels, such as
Haikaishi ("Haiku Poet",
1909).
Hototogisu became a vehicle for
modernist fiction and ceased publishing haiku.
In
1912, Kyoshi did an about face. Like many other poets, Kyoshi was dismayed at the increasingly radical experimentation of poets like Hekigodo and his even more radical students like
Ogiwara Seisensui. Kyoshi and
Hototogisu returned to haiku with a vengeance, advocating a strict conservative approach to the form.
To be fair, it wasn’t so much that Kyoshi was against the experimentation; what he objected to was the fact that these poems were called haiku. Kyoshi felt that the haiku was a classical poetic form and should be treated as such. A poet was free to write in whatever form he or she chose, but the poem was either a haiku or it wasn’t.
In practice, however, Kyoshi became the head of a dogmatic movement which dominated Japanese haiku and stifled experimentation. At first, plenty of poets flocked to him and his advocacy of a return to traditional poetic ideas. But other poets chafed at his strict rules and were "excommunicated" from the movement and shut out of the pages of
Hototogisu.
Hototogisu continued under the stewardship of Kyoshi’s son Toshio, who died in
1979 shortly before the magazine’s 1000th issue in
1980. As far as I know, the magazine still exists.