Saito Mokichi

Who was Saito Mokichi?

Mokichi Saitō was a Japanese poet of the Taishō period, a member of the Araragi school of tanka, and a psychiatrist.

The psychiatrist Shigeta Saitō is his first son, the novelist Morio Kita is his second son and the essayist Yuka Saitō is his granddaughter.

Mokichi was born in the village of Kanakame, now part of Kaminoyama, Yamagata in 1882. He attended Tokyo Imperial University Medical School and, upon graduation in 1911, joined the staff of Sugamo Hospital where he began his study of psychiatry. He later directed Aoyama Hospital, a psychiatric facility.

Mokichi studied tanka under Itō Sachio, a disciple of Masaoka Shiki and leader, after his master’s death, of the Negishi Tanka Society; Sachio also edited the society’s official journal Ashibi. This magazine, due to Sachio’s increasing commitment to other literary activities, was subsequently replaced by Araragi in 1908. The publication in 1913 of Mokichi’s first collection of tanka, Shakkō was an immediate sensation with the broader public. The first edition collected the poet’s work from the years 1905-1913 and included 50 tanka sequences, with the autobiographical "My Mother is Dying" being perhaps the most celebrated sequence in the book.