更新日：2010年7月5日

Ota Mizuho

Ota Mizuho, poet and scholar of Japanese literature, was born in 1876 in Nagano Prefecture. His real name was Ota Teiichi and he also used another pen name, "Mizuhonoya."

While he was a student at the Nagano Normal School (now Shinshu University), he familiarized himself with classical verse collections such as the "Manyoshu" and "Kokinshu," and wrote poetry himself, which was published in the prestigious literary journal, Bungakukai. On graduation, he started to teach at the Matsumoto Higher Girls School. Around about this time, he founded a waka verse coterie, called Kono-hana Kai, with the poet and critic, Kubota Utsubo. The publication of waka anthologies "Tsuyukusa" (Day flower) in 1903 and "Sanjo Kojo" (On mountain, on lake) in 1906 with his schoolfriend Shimaki Akahiko brought Ota wide recognition.

In 1908 he became a poetry adjudicator for the Shinano Mainichi newspaper. The following year he took up the position of professor of ethics at the Nippon Dental University in Tokyo. He married Shiga Mitsuko in 1910 and the two continued their creative activities while earning their living as teachers. In 1915, Ota began the tanka magazine, Cho-on, and gradually moved from creating his own verse to writing prodigiously about the theory of tanka and research of the classics. His waka anthologies include "Uncho" (Cloud bird), "Fuyuna" (Winter greenery), "Raden" (Mother-of-pearly inlay) and "Ryu-o" (Bush warbler).

From 1934, Ota Mizuho used a cottage in Ogigayatsu, Kamakura, as a retreat, and then moved there permanently from Tokyo in 1939 with Mitsuko. It became the center of his literary activity. He wrote many tanka about Kamakura until his death in 1955 at the age of 79.