SOURCE: "Takahashi Shinkichi," in Modern Japanese Poets and the Nature of Literature, Stanford University Press, 1983, pp. 335-79.

In the following essay, Ueda presents an overview of the literary career of the twentieth-century Japanese poet Takahashi Shinkichi, in whose writings he observes one of the few modern Japanese representations of Zen Buddhist poetry.

Takahashi Shinkichi (b. 1901) is a Zen poet, the only poet of major stature in modern Japan who can be so designated. A few other poets have shown an interest in Zen Buddhism, but none has followed its rigorous discipline with such dedication and persistence. Shinkichi's connection with Buddhism began in childhood, for his father's family religion was Zen and his mother had a profound faith in the teachings of the Shingon sect. When he was twenty, he spent eight months as an acolyte in a nearby Shingon temple. Six years later, after meeting with Master Ashikaga...