Sasaki Nobutsuna

was a tanka poet and scholar of the Nara and Heian periods of Japanese literature. He was active during the Shōwa period of Japan. Early life Sasaki was born in what is now part of Suzuka city, Mie prefecture. He was considered a child prodigy, and his father, Sasaki Hirotsuna, taught him the basics of poetry composition and encouraged him to memorize classical tanka verses. After graduation from the Classics Department of Tokyo Imperial University, he followed his father's wish and decided to devote his life to waka poetry, both by researching old verses and by composing new verses himself. Literary career In 1894 Sasaki published a lengthy patriotic poem Shina seibatsu no Uta (“The Song of the Conquest of China”), on the occasion of the start of the First Sino-Japanese War. The poem was extremely popular, and one of its lyrics comparing falling cherry blossoms to Japanese soldiers falling in battle for the emperor became a common symbolic phrase through the end of World War II. Sasaki founded a literary society called the Chikuhakukai (from his father's pen-name), which published a literary journal, Kokoro no Hana (“Flower of the Heart”) from 1898. Using the journal as a medium, he was able to popularize his own philosophy of waka, publish his research on the history and development of Japanese poetry, and to nurturing a next generation of poets. Among his many disciples were Kawada Jun, Kinoshita Rigen and Katayama Hiroko. The magazine is still in existence today as Japan's oldest poetry monthly. In 1902, Sasaki made a visit to China, travelling up the Yangtze River and visiting Hangzhou and Suzhou.