IZUMI Kyouka

Japanese Name: 泉鏡花

Gender: Male

Information for Authors: Kyouka Izumi (4 November 1873 – 7 September 1939), real name Kyoutarou Izumi, is the pen name of a Japanese author of novels, short stories, and kabuki plays who was active during the prewar period. Kyouka's writing differed greatly from that of the naturalist writers who dominated the literary scene at the time. Many of Kyouka's works are surrealist critiques of society. He is best known for a characteristic brand of Romanticism preferring tales of the supernatural heavily influenced by works of the earlier Edo period in Japanese arts and letters, which he tempered with his own personal vision of aesthetics and art in the modern age. He is also considered one of the supreme stylists in modern Japanese literature, and the difficulty and richness of his prose has been frequently noted by fellow authors and critics. Like Natsume Souseki and other Japanese authors with pen names, Kyouka is usually known by his pen name rather than his real given name.