Photography

Chirū Yamanaka

Chirū Yamanaka (山中 散生, Yamanaka Chirū) (7 May 1905 – 11 September 1977), born Toshiyuki Yamanaka and also known as Tiroux Yamanaka, was a Japanese poet, critic, translator, and editor who played a central role in introducing Surrealism to Japan. Working in Nagoya during the interwar years, he founded the avant-garde poetry magazine CINÉ in 1929 and established direct contacts with European Surrealists including Paul Éluard and André Breton. In 1937, Yamanaka and Shūzō Takiguchi organized the touring Kaigai Chōgenjitsushugi Sakuhinten (Exhibition of Overseas Surrealist Works), with assistance from European Surrealists including Éluard, Georges Hugnet, and Roland Penrose. Breton and Éluard's 1938 Dictionnaire abrégé du surréalisme listed Yamanaka as a Surrealist poet and writer and identified him as a promoter of the movement in Japan. Yamanaka was also active in Nagoya's avant-garde circles in the late 1930s. He helped establish the Nagoya Avant-Garde Club and the Nagoya Photo Avant-Garde, where he introduced fellow members to recent developments in Surrealism abroad. He was closely involved with Yoru no Funsui (夜の噴水, The Night's Fountain), a Surrealist poetry magazine founded by the poet and photographer Kansuke Yamamoto in Nagoya in 1938, and later published a poetry collection of his own under the same title in 1963. He continued to publish poetry and criticism after the Second World War, as well as books on the history of Surrealism and Dada.

Also on this shelf

See also

• ▸Daniel Draper (meteorologist)
• ▸Librarian
• ▸Angle of view (photography)

Uncatalogued shelf

Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.