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Mutsuo Takahashi

Born

in Japan

December 15, 1937

Genre

Poetry

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Mutsuo Takahashi (高橋睦郎) is one of the most prominent and prolific male poets, essayists, and writers of contemporary Japan, with more than three dozen collections of poetry, several works of prose, dozens books of essays, and several major literary prizes to his name. He is especially well known for his open writing about male homoeroticism. He currently lives in the seaside town of Zushi, several kilometers south of Yokohama, Japan.

Translations of five of Takahashi’s poems by Jeffrey Angles.

The PIP (Project for Innovative Poetry) Blog

After a bout of tuberculosis, Takahashi graduated from the Fukuoka University of Education, and in 1962 moved to Tokyo. For many years, he worked at an advertising company, but in the meantime, he wrote a goo Mutsuo Takahashi (高橋睦郎) is one of the most prominent and prolific male poets, essayists, and writers of contemporary Japan, with more than three dozen collections of poetry, several works of prose, dozens books of essays, and several major literary prizes to his name. He is especially well known for his open writing about male homoeroticism. He currently lives in the seaside town of Zushi, several kilometers south of Yokohama, Japan.

Translations of five of Takahashi’s poems by Jeffrey Angles.

The PIP (Project for Innovative Poetry) Blog

After a bout of tuberculosis, Takahashi graduated from the Fukuoka University of Education, and in 1962 moved to Tokyo. For many years, he worked at an advertising company, but in the meantime, he wrote a good deal of poetry. His first book to receive national attention was Rose Tree, Fake Lovers (薔薇の木･にせの恋人たち, Bara no ki, nise no koibito-tachi?), an anthology published in 1964 that describes male-male erotic love in bold and direct language. A laudatory review from the critic Jun Etō appeared in the daily newspaper Asahi shimbun with Takahashi’s photograph—an unusual instance of a poet’s photograph included in the paper’s survey of literature.

About the same time, Takahashi sent the collection to the novelist Yukio Mishima who contacted him and offered to use his name to help promote Takahashi’s work. The two shared a close relationship and friendship that lasted until Mishima’s suicide in 1970. Other close friends Takahashi made about this time include Tatsuhiko Shibusawa who translated the Marquis de Sade into Japanese, the surreal poet Chimako Tada who shared Takahashi's interest in classical Greece, the poet Shigeo Washisu who was also interested in the classics and the existential ramifications of homoeroticism. With the latter two writers, Takahashi cooperated to create the literary journal The Symposium (饗宴, Kyōen?) named after Plato’s famous dialogue. This interest in eroticism and existentialism, in turn, is a reflection of a larger existential trend in the literature and culture of Japan during the 1960s and 1970s.

Homoeroticism remained an important them in his poetry written in free verse through the 1970s, including the long poem Ode (頌, Homeuta?), which the publisher Winston Leyland has called “the great gay poem of the 20th century.” Many of these early works have been translated into English by Hiroaki Sato and reprinted in the collection Partings at Dawn: An Anthology of Japanese Gay Literature.

About the same time, Takahashi started writing prose. In 1970, he published Twelve Views from the Distance about his early life and the novella The Sacred Promontory (聖なる岬, Sei naru misaki?) about his own erotic awakening. In 1972, he wrote A Legend of a Holy Place (聖所伝説, Seisho densetsu?), a surrealistic novella inspired by his own experiences during a forty-day trip to New York City in which Donald Richie led him through the gay, underground spots of the city.
In 1974, he released Zen’s Pilgrimage of Virtue (善の遍歴, Zen no henreki?), a homoerotic and often extremely humorous reworking of a legend of Sudhana found in the Buddhist classic Avatamsaka Sutra. ...more

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Mutsuo Takahashi’s books

Average rating: 4.03 · 172 ratings · 30 reviews · 47 distinct works • Similar authors

	Poems of a Penisist by Mutsuo Takahashi, Hiroaki Sato (Translator), Burton Watson (Introduction) 4.08 avg rating — 40 ratings — published 1975 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Twelve Views from the Distance by Mutsuo Takahashi, Jeffrey Angles (Goodreads Author) (Translator) 3.93 avg rating — 29 ratings — published 2012 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Bunch of Keys: Selected Poems by Mutsuo Takahashi (Editor), Hiroaki Sato (Photographer) 3.84 avg rating — 19 ratings — published 1984 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Sleeping, Sinning, Falling by Mutsuo Takahashi, Hiroaki Sato (Translator) 3.82 avg rating — 17 ratings — published 1992 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Noh: Classical Japanese Performing Art by Mutsuo Takahashi, Toshiro Morita (Photographer), Kazuya Takaoka (Designer) 3.62 avg rating — 13 ratings — published 2010 — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Haiku: The Poetic Key To Japan 4.13 avg rating — 8 ratings — published 2003	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Only Yesterday by Mutsuo Takahashi, Jeffrey Angles (Goodreads Author) (Translator) 4.13 avg rating — 8 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	On Two Shores: New And Selected Poems 3.80 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 2006 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	We of Zipangu liked it 3.00 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 2006	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Buddhas in the Palm of Your Hand by Mutsuo Takahashi (Foreword), Kazuya Takaoka (Designer) it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Mutsuo Takahashi…

Quotes by Mutsuo Takahashi (?)

“To a Boy

Boy,
you are a hidden watering place under the trees
where, as the day darkens, gentle beasts with calm eyes
appear one after another.

Even if the sun drops flaming at the end of the fields where grass stirs greenly
and a wind pregnant with coolness and night-dew agitates your leafy bush,
it is only a premonition.

The tree of solitude that soars with ferocity,
crowned with a swirling night,
still continues in your dark place.

─Translated from the Japanese by Hiroaki Sato”
― Mutsuo Takahashi

3 likes

“In the name of
Man, member,
and the holy fluid,
AMEN”
― Mutsuo Takahashi, Poems of a Penisist

1 likes

“Sleeping Wrestler

You are a murderer
No you are not, but really a wrestler
Either way it's just the same
For from the ring of your entangled body
Clean as leather, lustful as a lily
Will nail me down
On your stout neck like a column, like a pillar of tendons
The thoughtful forehead
(In fact, it's thinking nothing)
When the forehead slowly moves and closes the heavy eyelids
Inside, a dark forest awakens
A forest of red parrots
Seven almonds and grape leaves
At the end of the forest a vine
Covers the house where two boys
Lie in each others arms: I'm one of them, you the other
In the house, melancholy and terrible anxiety
Outside the keyhole, a sunset
Dyed with the blood of the beautiful bullfighter Escamillo
Scorched by the sunset, headlong, headfirst
Falling, falling, a gymnast
If you're going to open your eyes, nows the time, wrestler”
― Mutsuo Takahashi

1 likes

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