"La città è un motore e il suo cuore è una dinamo-elettrica": considerazioni sul futurismo di Hirato Renkichi (1894?-1922)

Hirato Renkichi (1894?-1922) is mainly remembered as the author of the Japanese Futurist Manifesto (Nihon Miraiha sengen undō, autumn 1921). In this paper I present an outlook on the Japanese studies on this poet, and then I venture into a more original overview of his theoretical essays. My main goal is to give a historical and comparative perspective on the works of this almost forgotten Japanese Futurist. The first part is a survey on the actual contacts Hirato had with artists connected to the then-rising Japanese Avant-garde Movement. In the second part, I focus on his Manifesto and on two other essays (“Watashi no miraishugi to jikkō” and “Anarojizumu ni tsuite”) in order to show what Hirato took (or did not take) from Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s manifestos, and to enucleate his original contribution to Futurist discourse.