Masaoka Shiki facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Masaoka Shiki
Masaoka Shiki c. 1900
Born	October 14, 1867 Matsuyama, Ehime, Japan
Died	September 19, 1902 (age 34) Tokyo, Japan
Occupation	Writer, journalist
Parent(s)	Masaoka Tsunenao

Masaoka Shiki (正岡 子規), whose real name was Masaoka Noboru (正岡 升), was a famous Japanese poet, writer, and literary critic. He lived during the Meiji period (1868-1912), a time of big changes in Japan.

Shiki is known as a very important person in the history of modern haiku poetry. He wrote almost 20,000 haiku poems in his short life! He also worked to improve another type of Japanese poetry called tanka.

Many people think Shiki is one of the four greatest haiku masters. The other three are Matsuo Bashō, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa.

Early Life

Shiki was born in Matsuyama City in Japan. His first name was Tsunenori, but later it was changed to Noboru. His family belonged to the samurai class, but they were not very wealthy.

When Shiki was five years old, his father passed away. His mother, Yae, was the daughter of Ōhara Kanzan, a wise teacher of Confucianism. Kanzan was one of Shiki's first teachers outside of school. Shiki started reading important books with him when he was seven. He later said he wasn't always the most hardworking student!

When he was 15, Shiki became interested in politics. He supported the Freedom and People's Rights Movement, which wanted more rights for people. Because of this, the principal of his school, Matsuyama Middle School, stopped him from speaking in public. Around this time, he decided he wanted to move to Tokyo, and he did so in 1883.

School Days

Shiki first went to Matsuyama Middle School in his hometown. Later, in 1883, his uncle helped him move to Tokyo. He went to Kyōritsu Middle School and then to a special school that prepared students for the Imperial University.

While studying there, Shiki loved playing baseball. He became good friends with Natsume Sōseki, who later became a very famous novelist.

In 1890, Shiki entered Tokyo Imperial University. However, by 1892, he left college. He said he was too busy writing haiku. Others believe he left because he was getting sick with tuberculosis, an illness that affected him for the rest of his life.

His Writing Journey

Even though Shiki is best known for his haiku, he wrote many other things. He wrote different kinds of poetry, essays about poetry, and stories about his own life. One of his earliest writings was an essay praising Western dogs over Japanese ones.

During Shiki's time, some people thought that traditional Japanese poems like haiku and tanka were becoming less important. Shiki sometimes felt this way too. There weren't many great poets writing these forms anymore, even though they were still popular.

Despite this, Shiki started writing haiku soon after arriving in Tokyo in 1883. In 1892, the same year he left university, he published a series of articles about how to improve haiku. It was called Dassai Shooku Haiwa, or "Talks on Haiku from the Otter's Den".

A month later, in November 1892, he got a job as a haiku editor for the Nippon newspaper, which had published his articles. He worked closely with this newspaper for his whole life. He wrote many other articles about poetry, including "A Text on Haikai for Beginners" and "The Haiku World of 1896". He also wrote "Letters to a Tanka Poet" in 1898, where he encouraged changes to the tanka poetry style.

In his last few years, Shiki focused more on tanka. He died four years after he started writing about tanka. A little over a year before he passed away, Shiki began writing diaries from his sickbed. These included "A Drop of Ink" (1901) and "A Sixfoot Sickbed" (1902).

Later Years and Health

Shiki suffered from tuberculosis (TB) for much of his life. Around 1888 or 1889, he started coughing up blood. Because of this, he chose the pen-name "Shiki". This name comes from the Japanese word hototogisu, which is a type of bird called a lesser cuckoo. In Japan, people sometimes imagine this bird coughs blood when it sings.

Even though he was showing signs of TB, Shiki wanted to be a war reporter during the First Sino-Japanese War. He eventually got the job, but he arrived in China after the war ended in April 1895. Instead of reporting, he had a difficult time and met the famous novelist Mori Ōgai, who was an army doctor at the time.

Living in difficult conditions in China seemed to make his TB worse. Shiki kept coughing blood on his way back to Japan and had to go to the hospital in Kobe. After leaving the hospital, he went back to his hometown of Matsuyama city. He stayed at the home of his friend, the novelist Natsume Sōseki. During this time, he taught students and promoted a style of haiku that focused on observing nature.

In 1897, one of his students, Yanigihara Kyokudō, started a haiku magazine in Matsuyama called Hototogisu. This name was a nod to Shiki's pen name. The magazine soon moved to Tokyo, and another student, Takahama Kyoshi, took over and expanded it to include prose.

Shiki moved to Tokyo, and his group of students there became known as the "Nippon school." This was named after the newspaper where Shiki was a haiku editor.

By 1897, Shiki was mostly bedridden, and his illness got even worse around 1901. He developed Pott's disease, which affected his bones. During this time, he wrote his three autobiographical works. He passed away from tuberculosis in 1902 when he was only 34 years old.

What He Left Behind

A monument with a haiku by Shiki, near Matsuyama Station

Shiki is often given credit for saving traditional Japanese short poems and making them important again in the modern Meiji period. He wanted to change haiku, but his goal was to show that haiku was a real type of literature. He believed haiku should be judged like any other great writing, which was a new idea at the time. Shiki truly made haiku a respected part of literature.

Some modern haiku poems don't follow the traditional 5-7-5 sound pattern or use a kigo (a "season word"). However, Shiki's ideas for haiku reform did not suggest breaking these traditions.

His style of writing rejected old ways that used wordplay or fantasy. Instead, he preferred "realistic observation of nature." Shiki, like other writers of his time, learned about realism from Western literature. This way of thinking can be seen in both his haiku and tanka poems.

His Love for Baseball

Shiki played baseball when he was a teenager. He loved the sport so much that he was inducted into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame in 2002! He even mentioned baseball in some of his tanka poems from 1898.

See also

In Spanish: Masaoka Shiki para niños

• Masaoka Shiki International Haiku Awards
• Shiki Memorial Museum
• Samukawa Sokotsu