Fukunaga Takehiko was a novelist and poet from Fukuoka Prefecture. He graduated in French literature from Tokyo University in 1945 and published his first novel, To (The Tower, 1945) the following year, but was hospitalized with pulmonary illness for the next six years. During that time, he formed the literary magazine Matinee Poetique with Nakamura Shin’ichiro and Kato Shuichi and explored the possibility of rhyming fixed form poetry in the Japanese language. The three also started a new movement that distanced itself from the First Generation of postwar writers. Fukunaga published Kusa no hana (Grass Flowers, 1954), which established his status as a novelist. He taught for many years at Gakushuin University and was an expert on European literature movements. He translated many of the works of Charles Baudelaire and also classical Japanese texts into modern Japanese. He was one of three authors to write the story for the science fiction film Mothra, and became a Christian two years before his death.
See also CHRISTIAN LITERATURE.
Historical dictionary of modern Japanese literature and theater. J. Scott Miller. 2009.