Kunio Tsukamoto, an avant-garde tanka poet who had an enormous impact on the classical poetry scene following World War II, died Thursday of respiratory failure at a hospital in Moriguchi, Osaka Prefecture, his family said Friday. He was 84.
A native of Shiga Prefecture, Tsukamoto studied tanka — five-line, 31-syllable verse — under renowned poet Samio Maekawa while working at a trading company in Osaka.
He published his first volume of poems, "Suiso Monogatari" ("Story of Burial at Sea"), in 1951 and went on to release a series of other works. He became a central figure in the field, along with Takashi Okai and Shuji Terayama.
Tsukamoto, who served as a professor for 10 years from 1989 at Kinki University in Osaka Prefecture, also had exchanges with writer Yukio Mishima.
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