José Watanabe
Encyclopedia
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
vian poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
who won a number of literary awards.
Watanabe was born in Laredo, a large sugar cane farm in northern Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
. His father was a Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese immigrant and his mother was a Peruvian of Andean origin. In a very intimate way, Watanabe fused his two deep cultural backgrounds in brief but intense poetic work.
In 1970, Watanabe shared, with Antonio Cillóniz, first prize in the "Young Poet" contest organized by "Cuadernos trimestrales de Poesía." This award has also been bestowed upon poets such as Javier Heraud
Javier Heraud
Javier Heraud Pérez was a Peruvian poet and member of the Ejército de Liberación Nacional .In January 1963, a group led by the 21-year-old poet Javier Heraud and Alain Elias crossed through Bolivia, where they picked up weapons, and entered southern Peru...
and Cesar Calvo
Cesar Calvo
Cesar Calvo Soriano was a Peruvian poet and writer, author of The Three Halves of Ino Moxo: Teachings of the Wizard of the Upper Amazon , Pedestal for No One , and Sceptre of the Youth...
. He won the award Young Poet of Peru in 1971 with his first book, Album de Familia.
After a silence of almost two decades, he resumed publishing in 1989 with El huso de la palabra. After that came Historia Natural (1994), Cosas del Cuerpo (1999) and Habitó entre Nosotros (2002). In 2000, he published in Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
an anthology entitled El Guardián del Hielo and in 2004 he published in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
Elogio del Refrenamiento, a comprehensive anthology that won numerous accolades.
"He is one of the few living Peruvian authors that can be qualified as essential" wrote Esperanza Lopez Parada in Babelia, the literary supplement of El Pais.
Watanabe was also involved in the film industry as a screenwriter, production designer and art director. He died in April 2007.