Chuya Nakahara

Chūya Nakahara was a Japanese poet active during the early Shōwa period. He was born in Yamaguchi, where his father was a highly decorated army doctor. He showed an early talent for poetry and published his first collection, Sugurono, with a friend when he was in his early teens. He moved to Kyoto and then Tokyo, where he was influenced by Dada and other forms of European experimental poetry. He was one of the leading renovators of Japanese poetry and translated works by Rimbaud and Verlaine into Japanese. He also collaborated with other poets and contributed to various literary journals. He married Takako Ueno, a painter, in 1933 and had two sons. He suffered from poor health and alcoholism and died of meningitis in 1937 at the age of 30. He left behind more than 350 poems, some of which were published posthumously in his second collection, Poems of Bygone Days. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest modern Japanese poets and is often called the "Japanese Rimbaud" for his affinities with the French poet.