Shizuo Ito Japanese poet (1906 - 1953) Language Add to Watchlist Edit Shizuo Ito (伊藤 静雄, Itō Shizuo, December 10, 1906 – March 12, 1953) was a Japanese poet and teacher. He was born in present-day Isahaya, Nagasaki Prefecture. He founded the literary magazine "Ryo" with friends from Kyoto University and published poems in each issue. Through Yasujiro Yasuda, he came to the attention of Sakutaro Hagiwara, who highly praised his poetry. His works include "Elegy for My Beloved" (1935) and "Summer Flowers" (1940). Shizuo Ito People Edit He was born as the child of a fishmonger's apprentice[1]. His father, Sokichi, later succeeded in the livestock brokerage business and switched to the cotton trade. Shizuo, the fourth son, was raised in affluence as the heir due to the early deaths of his older brothers[2]. He studied at Omura Junior High School (present-day Nagasaki Prefectural Omura High School), Saga High School (present-day Saga University), and the Department of Japanese Literature at Kyoto Imperial University. In 1928, while still a student, his children's film script "Beautiful Companions" won first prize in a contest held by Osaka Mitsukoshi, and it was made into a film under the authorship of "Hei Shizuka" (directed by Hiroshi Shimizu, screenplay by Ayame Mizushima, produced by Shochiku)[3][4][5]. After graduating, he became a public school teacher (civil servant) and taught at Osaka Prefectural Sumiyoshi Junior High School (present-day Osaka Prefectural Sumiyoshi High School). After the war, he transferred to Osaka Prefectural Abeno High School. While engrossed in poetry, he also worked as a teacher, a "two-shoes" lifestyle, and never left the teaching profession throughout his life. During his time at Sumiyoshi Junior High School, he was known as a legendary teacher nicknamed "Kojiki" (beggar) because he taught the "Kojiki" (Records of Ancient Matters) and his style did not follow trends. During his time at Kyoto University, the professor in the Faculty of Letters was Sanjuro Tomonaga (father of Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965), who was a senior at Omura Junior High School. His students at Sumiyoshi Junior High School included Junzo Shono, a novelist and one of the Third New Generation, and Koyoshi Shimizu, a candidate for the Akutagawa Prize, and Osamu Shimomura, who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry[6]. His seniors at Omura Junior High School included Kiyoto Fukuda, a literary critic, Kuniki Kawazoe, a professor in the Faculty of Letters at Waseda University and a scholar of Japanese literature (specializing in modern literature), and Kanichi Kamachi, a professor of classical Chinese literature at Kokugakuin University. He began writing poetry around the time he graduated from university.