was the

pen-name A pen name or nom-de-plume is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen name may be used to make the author's na ...

of , a Japanese '' tanka'' poet and novelist active during the

Meiji period The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

Biography

Itō was born in what is now Sanmu city,

Chiba prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Chiba Prefecture has a population of 6,278,060 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of . Chiba Prefecture borders Ibaraki Prefecture to the north, Saitama ...

, as the younger son to a farming family. He attended the ''Meiji Hōritsu gakko'' (the predecessor of

Meiji University is a Private university, private research university in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. Originally founded as Meiji Law School () by three lawyers in 1881, it became a university in April 1920. As of May 2023, Meiji has 32,261 undergradu ...

), but left without graduating. His interest in poetry led him to visit the famous author Masaoka Shiki, who accepted him as a student. Itō established the literary magazine '' Araragi'' in 1903, and served as its editor until 1908. During this time, he published his poems,

literary criticism A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature's ...

and studies on the ''

Man'yōshū The is the oldest extant collection of Japanese (poetry in Classical Japanese), compiled sometime after AD 759 during the Nara period. The anthology is one of the most revered of Japan's poetic compilations. The compiler, or the last in ...

.'' He published a sentimental love story, ' ("The Wild Daisy", 1906) in the literary magazine '' Hototogisu.'' The story became a popular classic, and was made into movies in 1955, 1966 and in 1981. Itō came to be regarded as Masaoka Shiki's closest disciple with the posthumous publication of his ''tanka'' anthology ''Sachio kashu'' in 1920. His own disciples included Saitō Mokichi and . In addition to his literary career, Itō was also an amateur master of the

Japanese tea ceremony The Japanese tea ceremony (known as or lit. 'Hot water for tea') is a Culture of Japan, Japanese cultural activity involving the ceremonial preparation and presentation of , powdered green tea, the procedure of which is called . The term "Japa ...

. He died of a

cerebral hemorrhage Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), also known as hemorrhagic stroke, is a sudden bleeding into the tissues of the brain (i.e. the parenchyma), into its ventricles, or into both. An ICH is a type of bleeding within the skull and one kind of stro ...

References

*Fujioka, Takeo. ''Seimei no sakebi Ito Sachio''. Shintensha (1983). *Ito, Sachio. ''Songs of a Cowherd;: Translated from the works of Sachio Ito'' (Modern Japanese poets series). Marshall Jones Company (1936). ASIN: B000861F8W

External links

* * *
e-texts of works
at Aozora Bunko (in Japanese)
Sammu City Museum site
(in Japanese) {{DEFAULTSORT:Ito, Sachio 1864 births 1913 deaths People from Sanmu Writers from Chiba Prefecture 19th-century Japanese novelists People of the Meiji era 20th-century Japanese poets

Biography

See also

References

External links