Photo/Illutration Chuya Nakahara (Provided by the Chuya Nakahara Memorial Museum)

“Soiled sorrow: today too snow falls on it.” This is part of a poem composed by Chuya Nakahara, who spun the pangs of youth into poignant verses and died in 1937 in the early Showa Era (1926-1989).

The Nakahara Chuya Prize, known as the Akutagawa Prize for poets, is celebrating its 25th anniversary. This year’s winner was announced on Feb. 8.

The prize is awarded by the city government of Yamaguchi, where the poet was born.

However, “Chuya suffered from the feeling of not being understood by people in his hometown, and that became a subject of his literature,” says Akiko Hara, 34, curator at the Chuya Nakahara Memorial Museum in Yamaguchi.

Nakahara was born to a family that had run a clinic for generations, and his parents expected him to succeed in the world. His elementary school report card shows he was a straight-A student.

But he started drinking and smoking during his junior high school years and was held back for a grade as a result.

His parents felt embarrassed and sent him to a school far away in Kyoto. But the son took advantage of this transfer and started leading a freewheeling life, according to a chronology of events in his life.

He lived with an actress in Kyoto and moved to Tokyo with her. He failed to enter the university of his choice and made no serious effort to find employment. At one time, his worried mother went to ask a newspaper company to hire him.

His parents kept pressing him to make his way in life. But the son, wearing his hair long and sporting a coat like a poet in Paris, continued to depend on money sent from home. His parents eventually distanced themselves from their “disgraceful” son.

Nakahara was determined to live a life of a poet and despised his parents, who regarded literature as nothing more than a pastime.

“This is my old home; even a breeze blowing. Oh child, what have you done?--veering, the wind says to me,” goes one of his poems.

Nakahara died young at the age of 30. He would be stunned to learn that a prize bearing his name is considered a passport to a successful career as a poet.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Feb. 9

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.