The 2000 Soshitsu Sen XV Distinguished Lecture on Japanese Culture: Kuruma-za (Sitting in a Circle) – Thoughts on Japanese Group Mentality

March 6, 2000

The 2000 Soshitsu Sen XV Distinguished Lecture on Japanese Culture: Kuruma-za (Sitting in a Circle) – Thoughts on Japanese Group Mentality
Makoto Ooka (Poet)
Casa Italiana, 1161 Amsterdam Ave. (between 116th and 118th Streets, Columbia University
5:00 PM – 6:30 PM (followed by a reception in honor of Mr. Ooka)
RSVP REQUIRED: call 212-854-5036

Makoto Ooka is one of Japan’s most distinguished contemporary poets. He is perhaps best known for his daily poetry column, Ori-ori no uta (Verses of the Times), which has appeared every morning for nearly two decades on the front page of the Asahi Shimbun, Japan’s mass-circulation newspaper. In this widely read column, he examines a single poem written by a classic or modern Japanese poet, and occasionally a translation of a non-Japanese poem. Mr. Ooka has also published numerous volumes of his own poetry, as well as translations, literary criticism, and essays, for which he has received nearly every major Japanese literary award. English translations of his writing include: The Colors of Poetry: Essays on Classic Japanese Verse (1991), A String Around Autumn (1982), Elegy and Benediction (1991), A Poet’s Anthology: The Range of Japanese Poetry (1994), What the Kite Thinks: A Linked-Poem with Three American Poets (1994), and Beneath the Sleepless Tossing of the Planets (1995). He has served as President of the Japan Poets Association (1979-81) and President of the Japan PEN Club (1989-93). He was designated Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the government of France in 1993, and received the Imperial Award of the Japanese Art Academy in 1996. The following year he was designated a Person of Cultural Merit by the Japanese government.
Mr. Ooka is a Visiting Fellow of the Donald Keene Center, under a program supported by the United States-Japan Foundation.

OOKA Makoto   (Poet)

Mr. Ooka is considered one of Japan’s finest poets and literary critics. Born 1931, he is the author of the popular poetry column Ori-ori no Uta, which has run daily on the front page of Asahi Shimbun for nearly 20 years.  Mr. Ooka is a former president of Japan PEN Club (1989-93), professor of Japanese literature at Meiji University (1965-87) and National University of Arts & Music (1988-93), and member of the Advisory Board of Poetry International  (Rotterdam).  Mr. Ooka has received numerous awards, including: Officier, Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from the French government, Yomiuri Prize for Literature, Kikuchi Kan Prize, Hanatsubaki Prize, and Golden Wreath Prize.  He is the author of various collections of poetry in Japanese, French, and English as well as collections of essays on Japanese and international literature.

Mr. Ooka visited New York with his wife (Fukase Saki, playwright and essayist) for one month in March, 2000.  His activities included workshops and seminars with Columbia graduate students in Japanese literature (on kouta, imayo, and other forms of classical Japanese poetry), the Sen Lecture ( “Kuruma-za (Sitting in a Circle) – Thoughts on Japanese Group Mentality”) at Columbia University, lectures/readings at Princeton University, Harvard University, and The Cooper Union, and at Japan Societies in New York, Boston and San Francisco.