Vladimir G. Kurochkin

The paper provides a critical analysis of the interpretation of Shinkichi Takahashi (1901–1987) early intellectual views. Using the example of essays and samples of early poetry works, the unambiguous involvement of the poet’s work with the Zen philosophy is disputed. The “rebellious” spirit of Dada poetry, although it has common features with the ideas of Zen nihilism generally accepted in the academic circles, has a slightly different nature and properties. The deliberately provocative creative method of the poet of the early period is not probably the result of a conscious intellectual choice, but a derivative of a difficult biography and personality traits. Perhaps the early works and the image of the poet himself was largely mythologized by his immediate circles, and the poet himself, in numerous essays and notes, subsequently treated his early “verses” and painful spiritual searches very critically.

The paper examines the poetic image of a sparrow in the poems by Shinkichi Takahashi against the background of Zen Buddhism, which the poet practiced throughout his life. Though most scholars still discuss his poems in the context of Japanese Dadaism, the author shifts the interpretation of his legacy to Zen imagery and Zen philosophy. A great number of essays and notes published by Shinkichi Takahashi that remain almost unknown outside Japan may help us to expand our horizon in understanding his poetic images and render him a unique and profound poet that influenced the following literary tradition of Japan. The poet’s exceptional consistency and lifelong devotion to the image once created by him provides us a rare opportunity to study the transformation of his self-concept throughout his entire life. One of the main objectives of the article is also the question of delimiting the ideological message of European Dadaism with its subsequent interpretation in Japan in the context of the poet’s work. The paper attempts to establish what brings Shinkichi Takahashi’s dada closer to the elements of Zen philosophy, and what distances him, thus, from European Dadaism.