Kusatao Nakamura

was a Japanese haiku poet.

Nakamura was born on July 27, 1901, in Amoy, Fujian Province, China, the son of a Japanese diplomat. A few years later his mother brought him to Japan, where he was educated in various schools in Matsuyama and Tokyo. One of those schools was in Tokyo. When returning to that school twenty years later, he wrote perhaps his most famous haiku, reflecting on the falling snow and the passing of the Meiji era: 降る雪や 明治は遠く なりにけり Furu Yuki ya Meiji wa Tōku Narinikeri

Falling snow... Long has it now gone: the Meiji era In 1925, he attended Tokyo University to study German literature, compelled by the works of Nietzsche, Hölderlin, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and Strindberg. Following his father's death, he suffered a nervous breakdown in 1927 and turned to poetry, particularly the tanka of Saitō Mokichi. Eventually, he returned to Tokyo University, changing his major to Japanese literature and writing his bachelor's thesis on the poet Shiki Masakoa. He finally graduated in 1933. He was the first president of the Association of Haiku Poets.

Nakamura was a leading figure in a humanist approach to poetry referred to as . His verse was also noted for its ambiguity and obscurity. He went on to write over a half dozen haiku collections, several volumes of essays and criticism, and short stories he referred to as märchen.