The Attitude toward Death of Tanka Poets: The Cases of Takashi NAGATSUKA and Miyoji UEDA

When people got a fatal disease, what do they think about it? The Tanka poems that the patient compuses suggest the solution of this problem. Tanka poem is a Japanese traditionl verse with a fixed form and a lyrical character. For this reason, Tanka poem is suitable for the expression of the patient's feeling on his deathbed. In this paper, the cases of two Tanka poets were studied. Takashi NAGATSUKA (1879-1915) was a disciple of the famous poet Shiki MASAOKA and strove to attain his ideal of objective photographic description (shasei). His Tanka poems reveal a delicate sensibility, especially in the fight against laryngeal tuberculosis. And his works support the model of "psychological process of dying" based on the theory of On Death and Dying (1969) by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (1926-). Tanka poet Miyoji UEDA (1923-89) was a medical specialist for tuberculosis, too. His poetry and critical study were awarded many prizes. In the latter half of his life, he had a long struggle with cancer. The result is that his own poetry is characterized by introspective scrutiny of life. The above cases reveal the facts that the consciousness of death urges serious scrutiny of life and poetic creation, further, makes poems become the mental support to their treatment of life. I think that it gives us an important suggestion for "terminal care"