SOURCE: "Hagiwara Sakutaro," in Modern Japanese Poets and the Nature of Literature, Stanford University Press, 1983, pp. 137-83.

In the following excerpt, Ueda discusses the conception of poetry that Hagiwara put forth in his Principles of Poetry and analyses his works within that critical framework.

Hagiwara Sakutarō (1886-1942) is generally considered the most original of the poets who helped perfect the art of free-style poetry in modern Japan. Shi existed before him: Shiki, Akiko, and Takuboku, along with many other poets, tried their hands at that new verse form. But in two respects Sakutarō's contribution outweighs that of anyone else. First, his consummate skill with words demonstrated that modern spoken Japanese could be used for verse writing in an artistically satisfying way. Takuboku and some others had made use of the vernacular in their works, but their diction was little different from that of everyday speech. With Sakutar...