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R H Blyth Biography & Facts

Reginald Horace Blyth (3 December 1898 – 28 October 1964) was an English writer and devotee of Japanese culture. He is most famous for his writings on Zen and on haiku poetry. Early life Blyth was born in Essex, England, the son of a railway clerk. He was the only child of Horace and Henrietta Blyth. He attended Cleveland Road Primary School, in Ilford, then the County High School (later Ilford County High School). In 1916, at the height of World War I, he was imprisoned at Wormwood Scrubs, as a conscientious objector, before working on the Home Office Scheme at Princetown Work Centre in the former and future Dartmoor Prison. After the war he attended the University of London, where he read English and from which he graduated in 1923, with honours. He adopted a vegetarian lifestyle which he maintained throughout his life. Blyth played the flute, made musical instruments, and taught himself several European languages. He was particularly fond of the music of J.S. Bach. In 1924, he received a teaching certificate from London Day Training College. The same year, he married Anna Bercovitch, a university friend. Some accounts say they moved to India, where he taught for a while until he became unhappy with British colonial rule, but most scholars dismiss this episode, claiming it to have been invented or misunderstood by Blyth's mentor Daisetz T. Suzuki. Korea (1925–1935) In 1925, the Blyths moved to Korea (then under Japanese rule), where Blyth became assistant professor of English at Keijō Imperial University in Keijō (now Seoul). While in Korea, Blyth began to learn Japanese and Chinese, and studied Zen under the master Hanayama Taigi of Myōshin-ji Keijo Betsuin (Seoul). In Korea he started to read D. T. Suzuki's books about Zen. In 1933, he informally adopted a Korean student, paying for his studies in Korea and later at London University. His wife parted from him in 1934 and Blyth took one-year absence from the university in 1935, following her to England. After the divorce, Blyth returned to Korea in early 1936, leaving the adopted son with his ex-wife. The adopted son returned after World War II to Korea. In 1947 he was captured by North Korean soldiers; when he returned to the South, he was shot as a traitor by the South Korean army. Japan (1936–1964) Having returned to Seoul in 1936, Blyth remarried in 1937, to a Japanese woman named Kijima Tomiko, with whom he had two daughters. In 1940 they moved to Kanazawa, Japan, which was D. T. Suzuki's home town, and Blyth took a job as an English teacher at the Fourth Higher School (later Kanazawa University). When Britain declared war on Japan in December 1941 following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Blyth was interned as a British enemy alien. Although he expressed his sympathy for Japan and sought Japanese nationality, this was denied. During his internment, his extensive library was destroyed in an air raid. In the internment camp in Kobe he finished his first book Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics and wrote parts of his books about haiku and senryu. He also met in the camp Robert Aitken, later Roshi of the Diamond Sangha in Honolulu. After the war, Blyth worked diligently with the authorities, both Japanese and American, to ease the transition to peace. Blyth functioned as liaison to the Japanese Imperial Household, and his close friend, Harold Gould Henderson, was on General Douglas MacArthur's staff. Together, they helped draft the declaration Ningen Sengen, by which Emperor Hirohito declared himself to be a human being, and not divine. By 1946, Blyth had become Professor of English at Gakushuin University, and became private tutor to the Crown Prince (later emperor) Akihito until the end of his [Blyth's] life. He did much to popularise Zen philosophy and Japanese poetry (particularly haiku) in the West. In 1954, he was awarded a doctorate in literature from Tokyo University, and, in 1959, he received the Zuihōshō (Order of Merit) Fourth Grade. Blyth died in 1964, probably of a brain tumour and complications from pneumonia, in the Seiroka Hospital in Tokyo. He was buried in the cemetery of the Shokozan Tokei Soji Zenji Temple in Kamakura, next to his old friend, D. T. Suzuki. Blyth's posthumous Buddhist name is Bulaisu Kodo Shoshin Koju. Works Blyth produced a series of work on Zen, haiku and senryū, and on other forms of Japanese and Asian literature. He wrote six books on haiku (1949–52, 1963–64) and two books on senryū (1949, 1960), four books on humour in Asian and English literature (1957, 1959(a), 1959(b), 1961), as well as seven books on Zen (1942, 1952, 1960–64; posthumous 1966, 1970). Further publications include studies of English literature (1942, 1957, 1959(b)) and a three-fifths shortened version of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers by his favourite author Henry David Thoreau, along with an introduction and explanatory notes. The most significant of his publications was his four-volume Haiku series (1949–52), his Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics and his five-volume Zen series. Nearly all of his books were published in Japan, by Hokuseido Press, Tokyo. Work: Zen The actual 5-volume Zen and Zen Classics series is a modification by the publishers, caused by the unexpected death of Blyth, of the originally planned 8-volume project, which included a translation of the Hekiganroku (Piyenchi), a History of Korean Zen and of Japanese Zen (Dogen, Hakuin etc.) and a renewed edition of his 'Buddhist Sermons on Christian Texts' as volume 8; (as a result of the modification the already published volume 7 was reprinted as volume 5). According to D.T. Suzuki, the Zen series should have been "the most complete work on Zen to be presented so far to the English-reading public". The first volume presents a general introduction from the Upanishads to Huineng. Volume two and three presents a history of Zen from the Seigen Branch to Nangaku Branch, and volume five contains 25 essays on Zen. In volume four, Blyth translates the Mumonkan (Wumenkuan). Blyth's Mumonkan was the third complete translation into English, but the first one which was accompanied by extensive interpretive commentaries on each case. Blyth's early publication Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics, published 1942 when he was interned in Japan during World War II, and his Zen and Zen Classics series exerted a significant influence on the Western writers and Zen community, although nearly all of his books were published solely in Japan. Work: Haiku and Senryu In an autobiographical note, Blyth writes: "By a fortunate chance I then came across haiku, or to speak more exactly Haiku no Michi, the Way of Haiku, which is the purely poetical (non-emotional, non-intellectual, non-moral, non-aesthetic) life in relation to nature. Next, the biggest bit of luck of all, Zen, through the books of Suzuki Daisetz ... Last but not least there appeared senryu, which might well be dignified by the term Senry.... Discover the R H Blyth popular books. Find the top 100 most popular R H Blyth books.