10 Facts About Doppo Kunikida

Doppo Kunikida was a Japanese author of novels and romantic poetry during the Meiji period, noted as one of the inventors of Japanese naturalism.

Doppo Kunikida was born in Choshi, Chiba as Tetsuo Kunikida.

The family moved to Tokyo in 1874, but relocated to Yamaguchi prefecture and Doppo Kunikida grew up in Iwakuni.

Doppo Kunikida quit school in order to help support his family in 1888, but left for school in Tokyo in 1889.

Doppo Kunikida studied at the English department of Tokyo Senmon Gakko.

Doppo Kunikida founded a literary magazine Seinen bungaku in 1892 and began his private diary Azamukazaru no ki in 1893, the same year he began teaching English, mathematics, and history in Saiki, another rural area of Japan.

Doppo Kunikida's ensuing financial difficulties caused the pregnant Nobuko to divorce him after only five months.

Doppo Kunikida remarried in 1898, to Haruko Enomoto, and published his first short-story collection, Musashino in 1901, which portrayed people who fall behind the times.

Doppo Kunikida contracted tuberculosis in 1907 and moved to a sanatorium in Chigasaki in early 1908.

Doppo Kunikida died from the disease in 1908 at the age of 36.