Shinobu Orikuchi
Shinobu Orikuchi, also known as Chōkū Shaku, was a Japanese ethnologist, linguist, folklorist, novelist, and poet. As a disciple of Kunio Yanagita, he established an original academic field named "Orikuchiism", which is a mixture of Japanese folklore, Japanese classics, and Shintō. He produced many works in a diversity of fields covering the history of literature, folkloric performing arts, folklore itself, Japanese language, the classics study, Shintōology, ancient study, and so on. Yukio Mishima once called him the "Japanese Walter Pater".
Biography
Orikuchi was born in the former Nishinari, Ōsaka. After graduating with a degree in Japanese literature from Kokugakuin University in 1910, he started to teach Japanese and Chinese classics at junior high schools. In 1919, he was employed as a part-time instructor in Kokugakuin University. In 1922, he was promoted to professor. In 1924, he was hired as a professor at Keio University as well; afterward, he taught at two different universities until he died. As a poet, he and Kitahara Hakushu established a tanka magazine called Nikkō in 1924. In 1925, he published Between the Sea and the Mountains, his first tanka book, which is highly esteemed.In 1934, he received a doctorate for his study on the Man'yōshū. He also established the Japan Folklorists Society. As a folklorist, Yanagita was known for rejecting every sexual subject; Orikuchi, in contrast, was very open-minded to these matters. He became a model for the protagonist in Mishima's short story Mikumano Mōde, while his novel Shisha no Sho was the basis for a film by Kihachiro Kawamoto.
Personal life
Orikuchi was a homosexual. Harumi Orikuchi, scholar of Japanese literature and poet, was his de facto partner. Harumi died in Battle of Iwo Jima.Major works
- Umi Yama no Aida – Tanka book
- Haru no Kotobure – Tanka book
- Shisha no Sho – Novel, translated into English in 2016 by Jeffrey Angles
- Kodai Kenkyū – Treatise on folklore and literature in ancient Japan
- Kabuki San – Kabuki review