Commentary on the Art and Literature of Kinoshita Mokutarō

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In this essay, I will endeavor to explain the art of Kinoshita Mokutarō to the best of my ability. I do so in the hope of elevating the appreciation and understanding of his art. His full title, Dr. Ōta Masao, Professor of Medicine, Chief of Dermatology, Faculty of Medicine, Tokyo Imperial University, sounds rather formal. However, when I hear the names Kirishita-tei and Kinoshita Mokutarō¹ I feel nostalgic, and can’t help but admire his work.

Born in August of 1885 in Ito City, in the Izu region, he graduated from Tokyo Imperial University Medical School. He was a professor in the medical department of Tohoku Imperial University, the principal of South Manchuria Medical College, and travelled internationally.

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In his collection of poems Paulownia Flowers² Kitahara Hakushū once put to good use the technique and touch of the French Impressionists to breathe new life into what he called the ‘ancient green jewel’ of the tanka poetry tradition. Nagai Kafū spent five full years of his youth in Western Europe, from age 25 to 30, but upon returning from abroad, skillfully combined his own fresh and beautiful style with Edo sensibilities to write the novel Sumida River,³ and, as Kojima Masajirō said, create a work that was like an Edo-era painting. Indeed, Kinoshita’s work, characterized by its exoticism, began with what is referred to as ‘Nanban’ literature. The Amakusa Clan⁴ is one of his representative collections, and it includes excellent works such as Black Ships,⁵ Nagasaki Style,⁶ Yearning,⁷ Sandomejima,⁸ The Amakusa,⁹ and Paraiso.¹⁰ These poems were composed around 1907, in other words, at around the same time as Kitahara Hakushū’s Heretics.¹¹ At that time, he went with Yosano Tekkan of the Shin-shi-sha Poetry Group, and the poet Yoshii Isamu (among others) to Amakusa. Yearning is a part of the dramatic poem Amakusa Shirō,¹² a lovely dialogue between two sisters on a sea voyage from South China to India, and it is a fine story that is difficult to forget.

Around that time, he published that composition in Myōjō,¹³ and together with Kitahara Hakushū, Nagata Hideo, Yoshii Isamu and others, published Rooftop Garden,¹⁴ whose poetic style was striking and exotic, and became the beacon of the new romantic movement.

Following The Amakusa Clan were plays such as On the Front of Christian Church,¹⁵ Test of Allegiance,¹⁶ and The Tale of Tokubei Tenjiku.¹⁷ It must be said that for the time it came out, around 1909, On the Front of Christian Church was an unusual piece. And in 1912, it seems that kabuki actor Onoe Kikugorō was the first to stage one of Kinoshita’s plays on the stage in Nichō-machi by the Black Cat Theater Group. 

The climax of The Tale of Tokubei Tenjiku is entertaining, fantastic, and uniquely Kinoshita. 

In 1914, the social drama Kashiwaya Den’emon¹⁸ was released. Kinoshita suggested: “The basic tone of this play is that of a peacefully relaxed social climate, far removed from the city, and retaining the culture of the late Tokugawa period in Urawa, and then, later, into this climate, like river water flowing into a placid lake, the ideas of Christianity and Romantic Western sentiment rush in, causing great disturbance.” It is probably based on his hometown of Ito. 

(To be continued)