John Solt

John Solt (born November 6, 1949, in Capetown, South Africa) is an American poet, award-winning translator, independent scholar and Japan expert. Solt is a leading authority on Japanese 20^th-century experimental and surrealist art and poetry, in particular on two cutting-edge innovators Kitasono Katue and Yamamoto Kansuke. Solt is the author of “Shredding the Tapestry of Meaning: The Poetry and Poetics of Kitasono Katue (1902-1978)” a critical biography of one of the most influential Japanese avant-garde artists.

BIOGRAPHY [edit]

Solt’s parents George and Maria Strausz (the name was later changed to Solt) were Hungarian Jews who fled Budapest when the Nazis invaded Hungary in 1944. They managed to safely make their way to London, England and a few years later moved to Capetown, South Africa, where Solt was born. In 1958, the family emigrated to the United States, and became residents of West Hollywood, California.

EDUCATION [edit]

Solt graduated from Hollywood High School in 1965. He went to college at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he earned a BA and graduated magna cum laude. One of his professors at UCSB was Kenneth Rexroth, the modernist poet who would be instrumental in pointing Solt toward his future career. Rexroth became a mentor to Solt and remained a close friend for the rest of his life. Called the founding father of the San Francisco Beat Poetry Renaissance of the 1950s and early 1960s, Rexroth was well-known as a translator of foreign and especially Asian verse, including two anthologies of Japanese poems. Solt says Rexroth “kick started” his interest in Japanese poetry and literature and also first introduced him to the work of Kitasono Katue, whom he described as “the most important Japanese avant-gardist with an international reputation” of the 20^th-century.

Solt pursued his post-graduate education, first in Japan and then in the United States. He earned a master’s degree from Sophia University in Tokyo in 1980; he concurrently attended nearby Gakushūin University.

Solt went on to Harvard University. There he earned an AM degree in 1982 and a PhD in 1989. He studied at the school’s Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, specializing in premodern and modern Japanese literature. One of Solt’s professors was Howard Hibbett, the chairman of the department, also known for his prize-winning translations of Japanese authors. Hibbett was Solt’s PhD thesis advisor. The topic was “Shredding the Tapestry of Meaning: The Poetry and Poetics of Kitasono Katue (1902-1978),” which was the basis Solt’s full-fledged biography, published in 1999. A Japanese translation came out in 2007.

POETRY [edit]

Solt started to write poetry when he was fifteen. His first published book of poems was The Memories Are More Than I Can Remember (Tokyo: One Mind, 1980) followed by Anything You Don’t Want You Can Have (Bangkok: World X Congress of Poets, 1988) and Underwater Balcony (Ito, Japan: Kaijinsha, 1988).

Poems for the Unborn, a bilingual collection of Solt’s poetry was published in 2020. Eiko Aoki did the translations into Japanese. The 700-page volume is also illustrated with graphic touches inspired by Japanese surrealist artists. "A book that looks as good as it reads," wrote Taylor Mignon in his review for the Kyoto Journal. "At times a hippie, at others a satirist, but more than either of those, Solt is a poet. Few can match Solt's elegant, unique, and enlightened aplomb." Marjorie Perloff, in a review for Common Knowledge, said Solt “has produced volume of his own distinctive poetry ... riddling short lyrics laced with humor and a telling irony that makes the reader smile with a shock of recognition.”

Solt’s poetry is regularly published in GUI, a semi-annual Japanese literary magazine put out by past members of VOU, a group of experimental artists who coalesced around VOU magazine started by Kitasono in 1935. In VOU, Kitasono launched his cutting-edge "plastic poems," which combine visual elements and typography to create artistic and expressive compositions within the context of written poetry.

Solt’s Poems in Memory of Kenneth Rexroth appeared in Literature and Arts, an on-line magazine, as a contribution to a Rexroth Festschrift, a series of studies of Rexroth’s literary, historical and cultural significance. Meanwhile, Solt continues to write his Chocolate Poems, short, humorous, zen-like haiku-like verses printed on rectangles of chocolate. The limited-edition boxed sets of edible chocolate poems have come out annually beginning n 2006.

KITASONO KATUE [edit],

Kitasono Katue was the best known Japanese avant-garde poet-artist in Europe and the United States during the middle-half of 20th century. He was in contact with many writers and poets abroad. The most significant was Ezra Pound, one of the pioneers of modernist poetry with whom Kitasono corresponded over several decades. Pound's fond nickname for Kitasono was Kit-Kat. Solt’s critical and intellectual biography has in Japan prompted renewed interest in Kitasono and belated recognition of his avant-garde innovations. The book has also boosted awareness of Kitasono's artistry in the United States. "Solt’s study of Kitasono gives English-language readers for the first time a detailed and comprehensive treatment of this major world poet, only one of a handful of Japanese poets to have an international reputation,” wrote Leith D. Morton in a review for The Journal of Japanese Studies. The biography “will for many years remain the definitive work on Kitasono Katsue and his associates,” wrote Miryam Sas in her book Fault Lines: Cultural Memory and Japanese Surrealism.

In 1995 Solt published Glass Beret: The Selected Poems of Kitasono Katue. He received the 1996 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the translation of Japanese Literature.

Solt has amassed what may well be the world’s largest trove of Kitasono art. And museums that have mounted Kitasono art exhibits have relied on access to Solt’s collection.

Two Japanese museums held a first-of-its-kind exhibit in 2010, Hashimoto Heihachi and Kitasono Katue: Unusual Pair of Brothers, a Sculptor and a Poet. The side-by-side show of the art of Kitasono and that of his older brother Hashimoto—known for his wood sculptures, displayed numerous Kitasono artworks that came in large part from Solt’s collection. The previous neglect of Kitasono in Japanese art circles turned to enthusiasm in the wake of the popular show. “Suddenly it became unhip to be unfamiliar with Kitasono and his works,” observed Noda Natoshi, who was the curator at the Setgaya Art Museum in Tokyo.

In 2013, Solt collaborated with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) in mounting “Kitasono Katue: Surrealist Poet,” the first solo retrospective of the artist’s work in the United States or anywhere outside of Japan. The Kitasono art in the show--over eighty original photographs, paintings, and drawings, as well as many rare publications--were all selected from Solt's collection by Hollis Goodall, curator of Japanese art for LACMA, providing an overview of his entire career. A long-time advisor to LACMA’s Japanese Art department, Solt also gave several lectures in conjunction with the exhibition including a video overview of Kitasono’s life and work.

The Los Angeles Times called the exhibit "a must-see for anyone interested in modern Japanese art." The reviewer praised the "breadth and depth" of the show, saying it provided a "fascinating glimpse into the mind of one of Japan's most important and enigmatic artists." The New York Times called the exhibit "a revelation," noting that Kitasno's work was "both beautiful and disturbing," and that it offered a "unique perspective on Japanese history and culture."

YAMAMOTO KANSUKE

Solt has also focused his attention to the work of Yamamoto Kansuke, a Japanese photographer and poet who is known as one of Japan’s most prominent surrealist artists. Many of his works challenged Japanese society’s illiberal cultural norms, expressing antiwar and anti-government sentiments in surrealistic ways. A provocative roticism was also a theme. Kansuke was a member of VOU. He joined in 1935 and continued until the group dissolved in 1978.

Solt first met Kansuke in 19tk, when he interviewed him on the subject of the “Thought Police,” heavy-handed government censors who stifled avant-garde artists like him and Kitasono Katue, a subject he deals with in Kitasono biography. Solt communicated often with Kansuke until his death in 1987.

Years of effort by Solt to interest a museum to put on a Kansuke exhibition culminated when Tokyo Station Gallery mounted “Surrealist Kansuke Yamamoto” in 2001. Solt and Ryuchi Kaneko co-curated the exhibit, the largest and most comprehensive display ever devoted to the artist. Solt wrote the introductory essay for the exhibition catalogue, “Kansuke Yamamoto: Conveyor of the Impossible.” The show was well reviewed. “A ‘Subversive’ Finally Brought in from the Cold,” was the headline of a review in the Japanese Times, declaring “the exhibition goes beyond its subject’s photography to demonstrate the breadth and depth of his remarkable talents.”

Solt was a consultant for a landmark show, Japan’s Modern Divide: The Photographs of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto that the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles put from March 26 to August 25, 2013. It drew an impressive 360,00 visitors. The parallel exhibit contrasted Kansuke’s surreal art with Hamaya’s realistic black and white photography of Japan and its people in the post-World War II era. “John Solt provided great counsel on numerous fronts, and his insights about Japanese language, culture and history have informed this project on every level,” J. Paul Getty Museum photography curator Timothy Potts wrote in his introduction to the catalogue.

BUTOH [edit]

Solt’s exploration of Japan’s 20^th century avant-garde culture encompassed other experimental art forms, such as Butoh, a new type of dance choreography that sprang up in 1960s Japan, in reaction to the shocks of World War II and the social turmoil that followed. Butoh, is known for its expressionistic, glacially slow and contorted choreography. Kazuo Ohno, the world’s most famous Butoh dancer, was a friend of Solt. The relationship spanned three decades, lasting until Ohno’s death in 2007 at the age of 103. The two first met in 1978, introduced by Kazuko Shiraishi, a modernist Beat poet who had been in Kitasono’s VOU group. In the early 1990s, Ohno did a world tour dancing Water Lilies, one of his best-known works. The last stop was at Amherst, where Solt was an assistant professor of Japanese studies. Ohno had asked Solt if he could arrange a performance there, in part because it was the alma mater of Protestant missionary Joseph Neesima, whom he revered as a fellow-Christian. The founder of Doshisha University, Neesima was the first person from Japan to attend and graduate from an American University.

Ohno was one of a number of Japanese artists that Solt invited and arranged to perform while he was at Amherst including jazz singer Asakawa Maki, and shamisen instrumentalist Fuei Nishimatsu. Solt created butoh theater piece he helped create, “Lusty Woman, 69^th Generation,” for Motofuji Akiko, one of the founders of butoh. She performed it in Tokyo in 1999 to sold-out audiences. In 2006, to commemorate the 100^th birthday centennial of Kazuo Ohno, Solt organized one-day festivals in Bangkok, Thailand, Kyoto in Japan and at Amherst, culminating in New York City at the Martin Segal Theater. The festivals featured rare Ohno performance footage comprised of videos that Ohno gave to Solt over 25 years.

PERSONAL [edit]

Solt married Sachiko Sekine, a native of Japan, in 1973. They divorced in 2001. They have two sons. Ken Solt (named after Rexroth) is an associate professor of anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School. George Solt is an academic. He was an assistant professor of history at New York University and an associate professor at Doshisha University in Kyoto. He is the author of “The Untold History of Ramen: How Political Crisis in Japan Spawned a Global Food Craze.” John Solt’s older brother Andrew W. Solt, is a film and television writer, producer and director and is also the owner of the complete library of Ed Sullivan television shows. Solt’s uncle, Andrew P. Solt, was a playwright and Hollywood screenwriter, best known for his script for film noir classic, “In a Lonely Place.”

References

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