Nakayama Gishu

was the pen-name of a Japanese writer active in Shōwa period Japan. His real name was Yoshihide Takama.

Early life Gishū was born in rural Nishishirakawa District, Fukushima, in what is now part of the city of Shirakawa. He was a graduate of Waseda University. While at Waseda, he befriended Yokomitsu Riichi, whose poetry he would later compare to the haiku of Matsui Basho. After his time in the university, he taught English at a middle school in Mie Prefecture with his new wife, but returned to the Tokyo area two years later to accept a post as an English teacher at a middle school in Narita, Chiba.

Literary career While a student at Waseda, Gishū founded a literary magazine, To (“Tower”) together with Yokomitsu Riichi and others, to which he contributed his first story, Ana (“The Hole”).

In 1935, despondent at the death of his wife, he drifted around Japan and drank heavily, but in 1938, he published his first short story collection, Denko (“Electric Light”), and two years later, won the 7th Akutagawa Prize for his novelette Atsumonozaki (厚物咲). 1964 Noma Literary Award---Sakuan,『咲庵』 1966 Award of the Japan Art Academy---Sakuan,『咲庵』