Introduction
lage, a few miles from his native town. Though not quite eighteen, Toku’s mature wisdom and efficiency provided that support and moral courage of which he was in need. They started their house-keeping in a new quarter behind the cowsheds, where his parents soon joined them.[1]
The first twenty-nine years of Sachio’s life, so far as the records show, are devoid of poetic activity. Yet, judging from his temperament and his thorough knowledge of classical poetry as well as poetics, his later work must have been the outgrowth of these earlier years. He would probably have been a poet in any age, but that in which he found himself was peculiarly favorable for the development and appreciation of his genius. The exuberant literary revolt against the artificiality and rigid convention of the eighties was falling into the unhealthy emotionalism of the nineties. Led by Tekkan and Akiko Yosano,[2] the romantic Myojo school, preoccupied with new
- ↑ At last Sachio was in position to fulfil his earnest desire to provide for and comfort his parents in their old age. His mother died on March 2, 1904, at the age of seventy-three, while his father passed away in February, 1907, at the age of eighty-four.
- ↑ See the Introduction of Volume II of the present series, Tangled Hair.
6 
