was a Japanese journalist, writer, poet, and liberal activist. He was involved in the

Freedom and People's Rights Movement The Freedom and People's Rights Movement (自由民権運動, ''Jiyū Minken Undō'') was a Japanese political and social movement for democracy during the Meiji era, Meiji period. It pursued the formation of an elected legislature, revision of the ...

, which appears to have forced him into a nomadic lifestyle.

Biography

Reizan was born Wada Tsuneshige into a family of

samurai The samurai () were members of the warrior class in Japan. They were originally provincial warriors who came from wealthy landowning families who could afford to train their men to be mounted archers. In the 8th century AD, the imperial court d ...

in Sōma Nakamura han and later married into the Idos, who were an

Azabu is an area in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Built on a marshy area of foothills south of central Tokyo, its coverage roughly corresponds to that of the former Azabu Ward, presently consisting of nine official districts: Azabu-Jūban, Azabudai, Aza ...

-stationed samurai family. His wife was Ido Sumi. His father was a samurai-turned-farmer who wrote a handbook of farming (農業要録) (published in Tokyo in 1889). Ido attended and graduated from the Sendai Teaching College, which in the

Meiji period The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...

became the Faculty of Education of

Tohoku University is a public research university in Sendai, Miyagi, Japan. It is colloquially referred to as or . Established in 1907 as the third of the Imperial Universities, after the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University, it initially focused on sc ...

. In a professional capacity, he worked as a journalist and an editor-in-chief at various newspapers including

Osaka Mainichi Shimbun The is one of the major newspapers in Japan, published by In addition to the ''Mainichi Shimbun'', which is printed twice a day in several local editions, Mainichi also operates an English-language news website called , and publishes a bilin ...

, Sanyo Shimbun, and Tokyo Yokohama Shimbun. Reizan was a prolific writer who wrote and edited 27 books, the subjects of which ranged from criminal law to

Chinese poetry Chinese poetry is poetry written, spoken, or chanted in the Chinese language, and a part of the Chinese literature. While this last term comprises Classical Chinese, Standard Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, Yue Chinese, and other historical and vernac ...

. He had personal acquaintance with

Gotō Shinpei Kazoku, Count was a Japanese politician, physician and cabinet minister of the Taishō period, Taishō and early Shōwa period Empire of Japan. He served as the head of civilian affairs of Taiwan under Japanese rule, Japanese Taiwan, the first ...

with whom he toured

Kyushu is the third-largest island of Japan's Japanese archipelago, four main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands (i.e. excluding Okinawa Island, Okinawa and the other Ryukyu Islands, Ryukyu (''Nansei'') Ryukyu Islands, Islands ...

sometime between 1909 and 1916 (most likely in October 1910 when Goto visited Kyushu). Ido advocated the establishment of the University of Manchuria, which he thought would be instrumental in introducing modernity to

Manchuria Manchuria is a historical region in northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day northeast China and parts of the modern-day Russian Far East south of the Uda (Khabarovsk Krai), Uda River and the Tukuringra-Dzhagdy Ranges. The exact ...

and China.1905 満洲富籤策 ''Manshu tomikujisaku''. pp. 25-30 His proposition to provide people in Manchuria and China with higher education predates the establishment of the National Foundation University by 33 years.

References

External links

* Some of Ido's works are viewable a
the National Diet Library Digital Collections

The website of Ido's great-grandchild

Ido's Chinese poem that appeared in Taiwan Times

Sources

* Wakamatsu, Jotaro. 2002. Reizan - Ido Tsuneshige. ''Fukushima-Jiyujin'', vol. 17. (Reprinted in ''The Proceedings of Fukushima Jiyu Minken Daigaku Soma Taikai''. pp. 49–61.)

* Oshu-shi Goto Shinpei Kinenkan ed. 2009. DVD-ROM Goto Shinpei Shokanshu. Tokyo: Yushodo. Japanese writers 1859 births 1935 deaths Tohoku University alumni {{Japan-writer-stub