Images of Nonexistence in the Poetic Language of Kiyota Masanobu

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to show how images of nonexistence are expressed in the poetic language of Kiyota Masanobu. Influenced by surrealism, Kiyota nevertheless maintained a critical stance toward it, and sought to create images of nonexistence by capturing the point at which reality meets fiction. Expressing nonexistence led Kiyota to lose his poetic voice altogether, but after a three-year blank, he regained his voice through a movement to find a new language through mutual provisionary ties between the Japanese language and Okinawan dialect. In poetry criticism written around the same time, Kiyota proposed solidarity with the war dead as a place for the non-subjective subject, which can find individuality only in absence of community. In this paper I also reconsider this aspect of Kiyota as a critic.