innumerable far worlds are coming up.

Koutarou was born in 1883, in the Shitaya neighborhood, Asakura district, Tokyo, Japan. His real name was Mitsutarou, Koutarou was the penname he chose and is the alternate reading of Mitsutarou.

He was the first son of a famous wood sculptor employed by the Meiji court specializing in Buddhist objects called Takamura Koun, and his wife Waka (later Toyo); they also had at least one more son called Toyochika. Toyochika would, together with Senroku Kitahara, founded the avant-garde craftsmen's group called Mukei (Formless). His father sent him to Tokyo Fine Arts School in 1897, when the boy was 14, to study oil painting and sculpture with the intentions of his son following in his footsteps. At the age of 5, Koutarou had been given a set of chisels by his father for this reason. Before starting school, his father had taught him in his studio. Already during that time, Koutarou had become interested in literature and had started writing and publishing haiku and tanka poems. His father was a professor at the school while Koutarou attended it. During his time at the school he joined a literary circle called Meisei, organized by Yosano Tekkan, to which he contributed poems, mainly in tanka form.

He graduated with a degree in sculpture in 1902, and did post-graduation work focused on Auguste Rodin's work. After he completed it, he re-entered the school in 1905, this time in the Western Painting department. He also studied anatomy under Mori Ougai, who would become a literary colleague in a literary gathering later on, at one point during his academy years.

Thanks to the professor of Western art history and aesthetics, Iwamura Tooru, Koutarou's father allowed Koutarou to go study abroad. In 1906, he left Yokohama for New York, arriving at Grand Central Station about a month later, but the two New York sculptors to whom Iwamura had written letters of introduction to did not accept him as an assistant. He was instead hired by Gutzon Borglum (who would become famous for the Mount Rushmore National Memorial). In the meantime Koutarou attended the Art Students League of New York City, where he won second prize in an annual competition, which freed him from having to pay tuition for the following year. During his time at the League, he quarreled with his instructor almost every day, and he "disliked extremely the vulgar, what you might call the American, taste." He also often picked fights with Americans who called him "Jap" and got the best of them. He felt greatly alienated in the West, as a Japanese living abroad, but was still a dedicated student.

He did not stay in New York for that second year, and with the special prize money that Borglum, an instructor at the school, gave him, he moved to London in June 1907. He had intended to work and earn some money in New York before going to Paris to study seriously, but he was not overly impressed with New York or London. He was, despite that, an inexhaustible student of art and language. In London, he developed relationships with Bernard Leach and Ogiwara Morie. At some point, he also lived in Italy.

Paris, where he lived from June 1908 to May 1909, was different. Paris, he found to be a profound experience, and would later say that it was "the place I became an adult." It was a spellbinding city to him and it profoundly changed his outlook on life and art. He was never, however, high-handed about Paris. He was exhilarated by everything he saw and experienced, while in a perpetual state of doubt and despair. He wrote in an unmailed letter that he published after his return to Japan, that he constantly had to remind himself that he was in Paris; so engrossed was he chasing strange and beautiful things, he said, that at times he forgot it would hurt if he pinched himself. In Paris he saw an exhibition of several hundred drawings, all of nude women, by Rodin. Koutarou was moved beyond "simple words" although he was aggreived to feel that he did not possess the kind of "animal electricity" that the master had.

While in Europe, Takamura read Baudelaire, G. Apollinaire, and other poets and translated a number of their works into Japanese. He was in Paris during the same time as Arishima Takeo.

The reason for his exhiliration with Paris was the art, and his despair was a racial inferiority complex. It was this inferiority complex that made him cut his stay in Paris short, to less than a year, even though he had planned on staying there for several years or more. He returned to Japan in June 1909, a land he had longed for and dreaded to return to at the same time.

Rodin's influence on Koutarou was decisive. He became inspired by the works of art he saw in the West, particularly the impressionists, and his works was inspired by both Western and Japanese works. He always tried to move beyond his father's vision, even as he respected his father's skill as a craftsman and was partially inspired by him. But they had their disagreements regarding art and their relationship was strained.

He frequented Yoshiwara brothels, and one time he fought with a friend over a prostitute whom he called Mona Lisa. He became a pest to the art world. His article "A Last Glance at the Third Ministry of Education Art Exhibition," published in January 1910 and regarded as the first full review of its kind in Japan, is also a model of sarcasm, must have been infuriating, painful and even destructive to the artists whose works became Koutarou's targets. He was also close to the Shirakaba (White Birch) Society, which had members such as Shiga Naoya, Mushanokouji Saneatsu, Yanagi Souetsu, Satomi Ton, Arishima Takeo, Nagano Yoshirou, And Barnard Leach, who was the only Western member of the Shirakabaha. Koutarou contributed art to the magazine that the Shirakabaha ran, though puplication ended after the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1823. He wrote a piece for their Rodin's Birthday Issue in 1910.

He became a member of the Kinoshita Mokutaru's Society of Pan, a group of self-styled "decadent" writers and artists created to promote aestheticism and art for art's sake, who met in a tavern kept by a fellow aesthete. While many of the members enjoyed the time drinking, resulting in a lot of fights and the police watching them (according to rumors), Koutarou was one of those who didn't drink much and tried to keep the rowdy members in line so they wouldn't bother other people. Their magazine was edited by Nagai Kafuu and Sawaki Kozue, and was called Mita Bungaku (published at Keio University) through Shinshisha, which was considered the rical of Waseda Bungaku. Other contributors were Tanizaki Junichirou, Nagata Mikihiko, Suzuki Miekichi, Morita Shohei, Chikamatsu Shuko, Satou Haruo, Kubota Mantarou, Osanai Kaoru, Izumi Kyouka, Minakami Takitarou, and Tamura Toshiko, Watsuji Tetsurou, Kitahara Hakushuu, Nagata Hideo, Ishikawa Takuboku, and Yoshii Isamu. The group was devoted to the pursuit and enjoyment of sensual beauty. The city rather than the country, and foreign countries instead of Japan, drew their interest; they found solace in Bohemian cafes and bars. Imaginary worlds were deliberately created in order to seek liberation from the pains of reality. Social concerns were rejected. The sensitive perception of formal beauty became allimportant. The writings were chic and flashy. Too frequently without substance, the writers were attacked by critics like Abe Jiro and Akagi Kouhei; Ishikawa, Kitahara, and Kinoshita soon fled the group. Koutarou did as well, once he met his future wife. During his time of decadence, Kitahara was one of his companions in revelry.

It is thought that Koutarou, alongside Ogiwara Morie, laid the foundations of modern sculpture in Japan. Beyond sculpting and poetry writing, Koutarou sometimes was an art critic, as well as one of several who translated and published Western works in Japanese. He wasn't very good at writing prose, the writing tending toward the awkward. He had written traditional poetic forms before, but after his return to Japan he started to write in free verse instead, which he is said to have been one of the first Japanese poets to do. He wrote a lot of non-traditional, provocative works. His first poem of note, The Lost Mona Lisa, published in 1911, was about the disappearance of a prostitute.

He met a woman called Naganuma Chieko, an oil painter and member of the early feminist movement Seitosha born in the town of Adachi (now the city of Nihonmatsu, Fukushima Prefecture), the eldest of six daughters and two sons. She had the reputation of being a rebellious artist, and she, for example, drew the back cover of Seitosha's magazine's first issue. In 1912 he became one of the co-founders of the Fusain-kai group of artists alongside Kishida Ryuusei among others. In February 1914, he married Chieko and they lived a happy life in poverty. To him, Chieko was a saviour from the decadence that he had become wrapped up in, and from himself. Their marriage was founded on the principle of sexual equality with both partners pursuing their own artistic careers; they shared the chores and the atelier Koun had built for Koutarou. How successfully they were able to keep to this principle has been subject to debate, but there is no doubt that their type of relationship was unconventional and advanced for their time. Because they had little income, he sculpted during the day and wrote articles during the night. From time to time he was forced to borrow a fair amount of money from his father to keep them afloat. As Chieko's name was not added in the family register at marriage she was not, as far as Japanese law was concerned, Koutarou's wife, which gave her more freedom as an artist and as an idividual. The same year, he published his first collection of poems, called The Road Ahead (alternatively called The Distance of the Road, was influenced by the French symbolists and challenged conceptions of poetry by using subjects and diction that were not traditionally considered appropriate. This work became one of the two landmarks in modern Japanese poetry, showing a mastery of colloquial language for the first time. The other is Howling at the moon by Hagiwara Sakutarou, which came out in 1917. At a point, Koutarou bound/edited Nakahara Chuuya's poem collection.

He went on a few trips together with Chieko, once to Pompeii where they went on a tour on Vesuvius' crater, and once in 1933, to Kusatsu, where they visited the onsen, which Koutarou visited once before, in 1927.

In the 1920’s he published the collection Wild Beasts, many of whose poems expressed social motifs. Koutarou felt, along with many others then and later, that the modernisation was occurring not by organic evolution but almost by imposition and something valuable and quintessentially Japanese was being lost in the process. Nevertheless one introduction from the West that Takamura embraced was the concept of personal freedom. It cannot be overestimated how this put him at odds with the rest of a still rule-bound society. Koutarou was aware that he had persuaded Chieko away from a typical social marriage, into a more free-wheeling artistic life, and that she would be subject to dismay, bewilderment and outright opposition from those who felt that she was behaving strangely and felt threatened by it. Koutarou saw social conventions as unnatural "like standing rigidly to attention" , he wanted to be true to himself and believed in "living naturally and freely/Like the blowing of the winds, like the flying of the clouds". Nature was seen as a moral positive - even though it could mean exposing oneself to loneliness cut off from the rest of society.

Koutarou was part of a literary faction called Myoujou, or the Morning Star, and he contributed to the magazine, which was the organ of a circle called Shinshisha (New Poetry Circle). The magazine's style was inclined towards a sensual style in the romantic movement. It was founded by Yosano Tekkan, and other contributors included Yosano Akiko, Ishikawa Takuboku, Hakiwara Sakutarou, Iwano Homei, Kitahara Hakushuu, Noguchi Yonejiro, Kinoshita Rigen, and Satou Haruo. The magazine was advised by Mori Ougai, Ueda Bin and Baba Kocho, with Yosano Tekkan remaining as editor-in-chief of the publication. Myoujou was short lived, as internal dissension dissolved the Shinshisha literary circle. Many of its original members helped create a successor literary journal, Subaru (The Pleiades). Among the most notable founders are Tekkan, Mori, and Akiko. Koutarou was one of the contributors to Subaru as well as Ishikawa, Hakushuu, Kinoshita Mokutaro, and Yoshii Isamu. His piece A Green Sun was published in Subaru.

In 1929, Chieko was diagnosed with symptoms of schizophrenia and Koutarou did his best to care for her in any way possible for three years as she descended into madness. Her mental illness was agonising. Koutarou was losing the Chieko he knew while she was still there. During this time she attempted to commit suicide by poison; beside her easel stood a basket of fruits as if prepared for a still life painting. Her increased violence toward him - her violent, swearing, suffering from hallucinations and deep despair - became, in the end, too physically dangerous and he was forced to put her in a hospital in 1935. In 1938 he was briefly institutionalized for the same disease. Chieko died of tuberculosis the same year, briefly returning to her old self while se gave her a lemon she had wanted. Although the cause for schizophrenia was not well understood at that time, but Koutarou later would surpect that their pursuit of Western ideals had strained Chieko's none too strong nerves.

In 1941, Koutarou published a book of poems about Chieko, called Selections of Chieko, which was filled with poems about her and his love for her that he had written during and after their marriage. This book has, ever since it's publication, been a best-seller and is the longest-running best-seller in modern Japanese poetry. He was one of the Japanese writers who could really think in poetry.

About the time Chieko showed the first schizophrenic symptoms, Koutarou's views on art began to take on nationalistic overtones and, as Japan's expansion of its war against China in the thirties became the frequent target of worldwide criticism, he became more nationalistic in his writings. Koutarou became one of the strongest advocates in the literary and artistic world for Japan's militaristic policies. As though his earlier racial inferiority complex had been stood on its head, the admirer and promoter of Western ideals turned himself into a facile user of trite, tawdry, and dangerous military slogans. During the Second World War, Koutarou acted as the head of the Japanese Literature Patriotic Association. During the war, his studio in Tokyo was burned down. While Chieko's fall into madness was a private ordeal, Koutarou's turn to jingoism had social consequences which, to some, were extremely grave.

A few months after Japan's defeat in the war, the literary critic Odagiti Hideo frontally attacked Koutarou's "unprecedented," "despicable" change in stance, his "degradation." He charged him with "war responsibility" of the "first order." He was not the only critic who wanted Koutarou to be prosecuted as a "cultural war cirimnal" for his writings.

Partly in response to the accusation, and because he took the defeat of Japan hard, Koutarou secluded himself for seven years in a ramshackle hut in a remote village in Hanamaki, Iwate Prefecture, northern Japan, to come to terms with the guilt he felt over having encouraged young soldiers to battle and thus leading them to their deaths. He fled Tokyo through a connection with Miyazawa Kenji. He returned to Tokyo in 1952, seven years later, to work on a large bronze nude of Chieko that is still standing at Lake Towada, northern Honshuu, today. He finished the piece in 1954. At the beginning of his self-imposed exile he wrote an apology of sorts, a sequence of twenty autobiographical poems called A brief history of imbecility.

Koutarou died in 1956, at age 73, from pulmonary tuberculosis. Koutarou always considered himself first and foremost a sculptor, but he is more highly regarded as a poet who helped redefine the landscape of modern poetry. His most significant poetry is in free verse. In particular, his love poems to his wife garner the greatest praise for their moving emotional content and for their clear expression. His poetry were rooted in genuine everyday speech, and he also had great attention to sound, though not as much as Hagiwara Sakutaro did. The Takamura Museum is about 150m from the hut, which is not walled the Takamura Sanso.

A long time after his death, beings known as Taints are erasing well-known pieces of literature from the world, and from people's memories. A person simply called The Librarian (or Miss Librarian by some) uses alchemy to transmigrate/summon authors from their works to defeat the Taints and save the literature, and Koutarou is among one of these authors. He gained a youthful appearance as he was summoned, and also gained skills with a gun - though he was already proficient in martial arts. Now he lives in the Imperial Library with the other transmigrated authors, and when he doesn't delve into books to fight Taints, he crafts artworks mainly out of wood but also out of bronze, and he also paints. His room is overflowing with art and he often gives away pieces to other authors. He also writes more poems, and plays with the other authors. He is particularly fond of playing in the snow.