Sagawa Chika


Sagawa Chika was a Japanese avant-garde poet.

Biography

Sagawa Chika, née Kawasaki Ai, was born in Yoichi, Hokkaido, Japan, in 1911. She started studies to become an English teacher, but moved to Tokyo at the age of seventeen to join her brother, Kawasaki Noboru, who was already established in literary circles. They became part of Arukuiyu no kurabu, a modernist literary group centred on Katué Kitasono, who championed her work.
Kawasaki took on the pen-name Sagawa, from the characters for left and river, a likely allusion to the Left Bank of the Seine.
Her first publication was a translation of the Hungarian writer Ferenc Molnár, while her first poem, Konchu was published the following year. In her translations, she focused on mainstream poets, but her own poems were influenced by surrealism. Another source cites Aoi Uma as Sagawa's first poem, appearing in August 1930.
Sagawa's poems appeared in the Arcueil Club's magazine Madame Blanche, and she participated in the journal Shi to Shiron, a publication venture for Japanese avant-garde poets collectively called l'esprit nouveau. Her translations of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and other contemporary European writers appeared in these magazines, as well as Bungei Rebyû.
Sagawa developed stomach cancer in 1935 and died in January 1936, aged 24.

Selected works