/lit/ - Literature

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>The haiku must also belong to the prehistory of mankind, probably they were the first expressive motion of very limited speech, which struggled to say, and therefore had to say everything with effort; from this effort was born the lyric.
-Harukichi Shimoi

What's your favorite haiku /lit/?

>>18477472
Its Shimoi. He was nicknamed the samurai of Fiume because of that. Unfortunately he wrote about his Fiume experiences in a different book. He also worked as a translator for Kanō Jigorō, the inventor of judo after the war.

>>17899889
You have my katana and passport

For me its his friend, Harukichi Shimoi.
>Really loves Dante, becomes Japanese teacher in Italy, 1916
>WW1 breaks out, joins the Italian army and becomes an Arditi, teaching karate to his fellow soldiers
>Befriend D'Annunzio and party with decadent Italian noblewomen
>Be one of the first involved in the march on Fiume, nicknamed the Samurai of Fiume and Comrade Samurai
>Use diplomatic passport to smuggle messages between D'Annunzio and Mussolini
>Eventually return to Naples and publish a literary magazine for a year
>Meet the founder of Judo and work as his translator while he tours Italy
>Publish memories of the Fuime experience in Italy to much literary success
>Eventually move home to Japan and get involved in politics
>After WW2 meet Indro Montanelli, the madman who once bought and married a 12 year old Eritrean girl, and tour around Italy with him one last time
He doesn't have the glamour of D'Annunzio, but you can tell he was a real human being and a certifiable badass.

>Harukichi Shimoi (下位春吉 Shimoi Harukichi) (Fukuoka, October 20, 1883 – December, 1954) was a Japanese poet and writer.
>In 1917, he enlisted in the Italian army during World War I, and committed himself to fighting against the Central Powers. Harukichi became an Ardito, teaching his fellow soldiers some karate.
>Using his diplomatic passport that allowed him great freedom of movement, Shimoi acted after the war as a liaison for secret mails between Gabriele D'Annunzio, then regent of Fiume, and Benito Mussolini, at the time the head of the Italian Fasci di Combattimento and editor of Il Popolo d'Italia . Shimoi was, among other things, one of the people first entering the Fiume Endeavour of the Italian poet. D'Annunzio nicknamed Shimoi "comrade Samurai" and "the Samurai of Fiume". Together they promoted and organized the Rome-Tokyo flight performed by the aviator Arturo Ferrarin.
>Returning to Naples in 1920, he founded the Japanese literature magazine Sakura, that would be published until March of the following year for a total of five issues. In 1934 he served as an interpreter to the founder of Judo, Jigoro Kano, while he was staying in Italy. The translated interviews given by Kano were a mainspring for the development of such discipline in Italy.
>Shimoi translated numerous works from Japanese into Italian and vice versa. He translated works by a number of Japanese authors like Akiko Yosano and Matsuo Bashō, while his translations into Japanese included D'Annunzio and Dante. In 1920, Shimoi even promoted the construction of a temple dedicated to him in Tokyo. Some of his works include Shinto Ponpeo or tou tame ni (1926), dedicated to the ruins of the Roman city of Pompeii, and The Italian war seen by a Japanese (1919).

>Born as Harukichi Inoue, he later adopted the surname of his wife when they married in 1907. He finished his studies in Japan, and had the occasion to meet Bin Ueda, by whom he was profoundly influenced. Shimoi then moved to Italy to study Dante, becoming a Japanese teacher at the Naples Eastern University.
>In 1917, he enlisted in the Italian army during World War I, and committed himself to fighting against the Central Powers. Harukichi became an Ardito, teaching his fellow soldiers some karate.
>Using his diplomatic passport that allowed him great freedom of movement, Shimoi acted after the war as a liaison for secret mails between Gabriele D'Annunzio, then regent of Fiume, and Benito Mussolini, at the time the head of the Italian Fasci di Combattimento and editor of Il Popolo d'Italia . Shimoi was, among other things, one of the people first entering the Fiume Endeavour of the Italian poet. D'Annunzio nicknamed Shimoi "comrade Samurai" and "the Samurai of Fiume". Together they promoted and organized the Rome-Tokyo flight performed by the aviator Arturo Ferrarin.
>Returning to Naples in 1920, he founded the Japanese literature magazine Sakura, that would be published until March of the following year for a total of five issues. In 1934 he served as an interpreter to the founder of Judo, Jigoro Kano, while he was staying in Italy. The translated interviews given by Kano were a mainspring for the development of such discipline in Italy.
>Getting back to his homeland, Shimoi helped the Italian Embassy in Tokyo to stop the pro-Ethiopian activities of the Japanese rightist clubs during the war in Ethiopia. Shimoi was one of the best known Japanese supporters of Italian fascism, seeing some analogies between the fascist principles and the traditional values of Japanese culture, especially the Bushido. He argued that fascism was a natural ramification of the risorgimento, and that its role was to be a "spiritual movement" that would make Italians identify as being part of the new nation. While being a supporter of fascism in Italy, Shimoi didn't ever promote it in Japan, considering such movement an Italian cultural phenomenon.
>After the second World War, Shimoi met and became friends with Indro Montanelli, who arrived in Japan to work on a series of reportages. Shimoi became his guide around the country.
More reading Wikipedia articles about literature, but still pretty cool