Hidemitsu Tanaka

Hidemitsu Tanaka was the son of an historian and grew up with his mother’s family in Kamakura. While attending the Faculty of Political Science and Economics at Waseda University he was a member of the Japanese rowing team at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. His brother, a journalist, introduced him to writing and influenced him to join the Communist Party. However, Hidemitsu left the party after a few years and joined Yokohama Rubber, working in their Keijo (now Seoul) Office in Korea after graduation in 1935. When his story “Blowing Sky” was published in the journal “Hibō ‘Unwanted’”, he was encouraged by novelist Dazai Osamu. Returning to Tokyo in 1940 to meet Dazai, Tanaka published his masterpiece “Orinposu no Kajitsu” (“The Fruit of Olympus”, initially called “Apricot Fruit”), based on his experiences at the Olympics, a work for which he received the Shinzaburo Iketani Award. In 1944 he returned to Shizuoka, but left his wife and child three years later to live in Tokyo.

After Dazai committed suicide in 1948, Tanaka became addicted to sleeping pills. In the following year, he stabbed his mistress while under their influence. Later that year, at Dazai’s grave, Tanaka committed suicide by taking 100s of sleeping pills and slashing his wrist with a razor. He was taken to hospital but died the same night at the age of 36. His son Koji Tanaka also became a novelist.

Tanaka belonged to the Buraiha or Decadent School that expressed the identity crisis due to the decline of traditional Japan after World War II. Buraiha novels are populated by debauchery and aimless antiheroes.