Gan Tanigawa was a Japanese poet, critic, and social activist. He is best known for his work with the poetry group.

Early life and education

Tanigawa was born Iwao Tanigawa on December 25, 1923 in

Minamata, Kumamoto is a city located in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. It is on the west coast of Kyūshū and faces Amakusa islands. Minamata was established as a village in 1889, re-designated as a town in 1912 and grew into a city in 1949. As of March 2017, the ci ...

. He was born the second of six children. His siblings include and . He entered

Tokyo Imperial University , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project by ...

in 1942. He was a student conscript in the military during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, but returned to the university and finished his degree in 1945.

Career

After graduation Tanigawa worked as a journalist. While working he joined a poetry group which published a journal called . In 1947 Tanigawa joined the

Japanese Communist Party The is a left-wing to far-left political party in Japan. With approximately 270,000 members belonging to 18,000 branches, it is one of the largest non-governing communist parties in the world. The party advocates the establishment of a democr ...

. He published his first volume of poetry in 1954, then another in 1956 and 1960. In 1958 he moved to the Chikuhō region with Kazue Morisaki and and founded a poetry group and journal called . Tanigawa left the Communist Party during the Anpo protests. Instead he became involved in the Miike coal mine strike that was happening at that time. When that failed, he tried to organize at a smaller mine. Often his work focused on the local level, with hopes of that change then making an impact on a larger scale. In 1962 he tried to start a school with , , and , but it failed. In 1966 he paused his writing and returned to Tokyo, where he founded a company. He moved to Nagano prefecture in 1978, then left his company in 1980. Though he did not write for the

New Left The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, g ...

, Gan is credited as a predecessor to the movement. His writing style has been called "magical, but highly conceptual". Tanigawa died of

lung cancer Lung cancer, also known as lung carcinoma (since about 98–99% of all lung cancers are carcinomas), is a malignant lung tumor characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissue (biology), tissues of the lung. Lung carcinomas derive from tran ...

on February 2, 1995 in Kawasaki.

References

1923 births 1995 deaths 20th-century Japanese poets Japanese activists Japanese critics University of Tokyo alumni {{DEFAULTSORT:Tanigawa, Gan