Soma Gyofu
Soma Gyofu was an active poet and literary critic from the Meiji Period (1868 - 1912) through into the Showa Period (1926 - 1989). He wrote the words for the college song of Waseda University and for some children's songs, which are still sung as immortal works. He was born in a leading old family in Itoigawa, his father being the fourth mayor of Itoigawa. Having close acquaintance with waka (31-syllable Japanese poems) and haiku, he published a poem in a magazine at the age of nineteen. After entering Waseda University, he started to publish a magazine and advocated the development of Romanticism literature and the reformation of poems, which ushered in a new phase in the world of poetry. After graduating from the university, he took charge of editing a magazine 'Waseda Literature' and was active as a naturalism critic. He also devoted himself to humanitarianism of Tolstoi and translated many pieces of Russian literature including War and Peace and Anna Karenina. When he was thirty-four years old, he moved back to Itoigawa, feeling agony mentally and physically. After that, he engrossed himself in writing and reading until he succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of sixty-eight. He also left many writings on Ryokan (a Zen monk, poet and calligrapher in the Yedo Period) as the leading expert of the study on him. The house where Gyofu lived still remains in the city and you can have a glimpse of his way of living. (See photograph)
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