Shūzō Takiguchi was the most prominent figure in Japanese Surrealism. He penned ‘On the Poetics of Surrealism’ as early as 1928, and translated André Breton’s Surrealism and Painting in 1930. Foremost a poet, his impact on the visual arts was nonetheless vast. By the 1930s, he was supporting the growing number of artists working in a Surrealist manner in the face of hostility from the authorities. He collected art, wrote criticism, and organised exhibitions—most notably those of the Yomiuri Independents in the 1950s, and the Japanese pavilion at the 1958 Venice Biennale. He corresponded with Breton, and eventually met him as well as others, including Salvador Dalí, Henri Michaux, and Joan Miró, while in Europe in 1958.