was a Japanese poet and painter. He was one of the foremost pioneers of the international avant-garde concrete poetry movement, creating works of calligraphic, visual and aural poetry. He is recognized as one of the most important poets of recent times in Japanese and German textbooks.
It is said that during his later years, he started to prefer the old kanji orthography form of his name, .
Life
Time in Sendai
Niikuni was born on December 7, 1925, in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. He entered the Sendai Technical School (now Sendai Technical High School) and studied architecture. After graduating from high school, he entered the Tohoku Gakuin University to study English literature and graduated from there in 1951.
In 1952 he began his career as a poet in earnest by joining a circle that published the poetry magazine Hyōga (, lit. "glacier"). In the fifth issue of this magazine, he published his first poem called Urei wo Paipu ni Tsumete ().
In 1960 he left Hyōga and joined Bungei Tōhoku (). The motifs and audiovisual presentation that he would later become famous for, could already be seen in the works he submitted to Bungei Tōhoku. At the same time he was also a contributor for the Kahoku Shimpo ( Kahoku Shinpō) newspaper. He was already titled a poet and a painter at that time.
Moving to Tokyo and Zero-on
In 1962, Niikuni would publish a magazine called Tama () with two other poets he met while contributing to Bungei Tōhoku. The same year, in the fall he remarked that "people in Sendai just don't understand" and decided to move to Tokyo. He worked for a while at a design studio, and moved on to work for an NHK art department. He also married painter Kiyo Miura ( Miura Kiyo) the same year.
In 1963 he published the poetry anthology Zero-on (). A limited run of 300 copies, it was but an ordinary and simplistic book of no more than 48 pages. The title Zero-on was picked by his wife Kiyo from a list of several candidate names.
Founding of ASA and international attention
In 1964, Niikuni participated in the E. E. Cummings study group held in Yukinobu Kagiya's house, and met Yasuo Fujitomi while there. On June 4, he established an association called the Association of Study of Arts or ASA ( Geijutsu Kenkyū Kyōkai) with Fujitomi with the objective of exploring and experimenting with concrete poetry. They published a namesake magazine ASA and in it introduced both Japanese and foreign concrete poetry, and also translated poems by Haroldo de Campos into Japanese. Fujitomi would also introduce the Brazilian concrete poetry group Noigandres' (es) member Luis Carlos Vinholes to Niikuni, and Vinholes in turn introduced the French poet Pierre Garnier (fr) to Niikuni. Niikuni would later send Zero-on to Garnier.
In 1966, Niikuni and Garnier published a collective poetry work together called Nichifutsu Shishū () in France. Furthermore, in 1969 he was asked to and displayed his works at the German Visual Poetry exhibition at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen. Requests from abroad to display his works kept increasing, and Niikuni gradually started to set his sights on foreign exhibitions. In 1974, he held a one-man exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London.
Later years
From an early age, Niikuni had chest ailments and was constantly worried about his health. He was reportedly very happy to reach the age of 50, but would succumb to a sudden illness only two years later on August 23, 1977. He died in his home in Tokyo at the age of 52 (kazoedoshi). The publication of ASA also came to an end, with the seventh issue published in 1974 remaining as the last issue.
Works
Modernism in the beginning
Niikuni started to write poetry on the side while attending school, and until he was in his twenties he would write not experimental poetry but lyrical poetry. The effect of Sakutarō Hagiwara could be seen in these works, and Niikuni also admitted himself that Hagiwara was his starting point. Niikuni also wrote that he paid attention to the works of Shirō Murano and Junzaburō Nishiwaki. In addition, he was fascinated by surrealism, new objectivity and existentialism among others.