The Kobe Hotel: Memoirs recounts poet Sanki Saitō’s wartime exile in Kobe after he was censored by Japan’s Special Higher Police. Living in a run-down hotel alongside bar hostesses, drifters, and foreign residents, Saitō observes a community clinging to personal freedom amid surveillance, poverty, and air raids, offering a rare anti-war portrait of everyday life and a testament to artistic resistance and survival during Japan’s wartime years.

Sanki Saitō (1900–1962) was a Japanese poet and a leading figure of the New Rising Haiku (Shinkō Haiku) movement. Trained as a dentist, he turned to haiku in his thirties and became known for his radical, anti-war stance. In 1940 he was arrested and censored by Japan’s Special Higher Police for violating the Peace Preservation Law. His work is regarded as a major contribution to Shōwa-era literature.

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Free for members of The Japan Society

Book available from Waterstones, and Amazon (translated by Masaya Saito)
Japanese version available here