Chika Sagawa

Sagawa Chika (左川ちか) is a Japanese poet who lived in the years 1911-1936, a member of the modernist artistic group Arukuiyu no kurabu, also known as the Arcueil Club. Her peenname, Sagawa, is a combination of the words “left” and “river”, which she probably took in honor of the left bank of the Parisian Seine.

Although Sagawa was primarily an avant-garde poet, her work was also influenced by the classics and surrealists. She translated authors such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Ferenc Molnár into Japanese. She published in the most prestigious literary journals of the Taishō era, including “Madame Blanche” and “Shi to Shiron”. In Tajfuny you will find her “The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa” in the exquisite translation of Sawako Nakayasu.