About Masaoka Shiki
Masaoka Shiki, pen-name of Masaoka Noboru, was a Japanese poet, author, and literary critic in Meiji period Japan. Shiki is regarded as a major figure in the development of modern haiku poetry, credited with writing nearly 20,000 stanzas during his short life. He also wrote on reform of tanka poetry. Kanzan was the first of Shiki's extra-school tutors; at the age of 7 the boy began reading Mencius under his tutelage. The young Shiki first attended his hometown Matsuyama Middle School, where Kusama Tokiyoshi, a leader of the discredited Freedom and People's Rights Movement, had recently served as principal. Shiki was first enrolled in Kyōritsu Middle School and later matriculated into University Preparatory School. (Daigaku Yobimon) affiliated with Imperial University (Teikoku Daigaku). Suffering from the early symptoms of TB, Shiki sought work as a war correspondent in the First Sino-Japanese War and, while eventually obtaining his goal, he arrived in China after the April 17, 1895 signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki.
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