Introduction
him the vital link between the poetry of the past and present, and the acknowledged leader of the Araragi school.
Kojiro Ito, better known by his pen-name Sachio, was born on August 18, 1864, in Naruto, Kazusa Province, the youngest son of Ryosaku and Natsu Ito. Situated at the end of the fertile Kwanto Plain famous in Japanese history, Naruto is a small castle-town founded by Lord Yasumichi Ishikawa in 1590. Until the close of the nineteenth century, it remained a feudal citadel. For generations the Ito family owned in the outskirts of the town a small farm which yielded them a meagre living. The old thatched cottage with a grove of pine trees behind, a stream full of crawfish, the yellow rape-seed field that merged into the blue ocean, and the distant roar of the Pacific haunted Sachio years later when he began to dwell in the large city.
Sachio was the child of his parents’ old age. As he wrote:
“My mother was father’s second wife and married him rather late in life. My older brother and I were her only children, and as a child I remember well how gray her hair was.”
There is a charming description of the family
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