A poet, art historian and calligrapher. His art names were Shuso Dojin and Konsai. He wrote tanka and haiku from his middle-school years and read deeply in the Man'yoshu and the poems of Ryokan. He graduated in English literature from Waseda University in 1906, and taught at Waseda Middle School and Waseda University from 1910 until 1945. In 1945 he returned to Niigata, where he became president of the Yukan Niigata newspaper and an honorary adviser to the Niigata Nippo, and was named an honorary citizen of the city. Taking the manner of the Man'yoshu as his ground, he built a poetic style of his own that sang with a modern sensibility shaped by both Eastern and Western art and letters. He was also a calligrapher of the first rank.