Background
Kinoshita was born in what is now part of Okayama city, Okayama prefecture, and was a direct lineal descendent of a brother-in-law of Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
木下 利玄
Kinoshita was born in what is now part of Okayama city, Okayama prefecture, and was a direct lineal descendent of a brother-in-law of Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
Kinoshita attended the Gakushuin Peers’ School, where he was a classmate of Mushanokōji Saneatsu.
After the Meiji Restoration, he was given the title of viscount (shishaku) under the kazoku peerage system. Kinoshita would have thus been a daimyo if the Tokugawa shogunate had lasted only a few years longer. He contributed extensively to the society"s literary magazine, with elegant tanka verses, written in an easy-to-understand colloquial language.
Kinoshita married a fellow student in 1911, the same year that he graduated, and had a son the following year.
From 1912-1916, Kinoshita taught at a junior high school in the Mejiro neighborhood of Tokyo. Kinoshita published numerous anthologies of his verses, including Kogyoku ("Red Ball", 1919) and Ichiro ("One Alley", 1924).
He joined the staff of the Araragi literary magazine in 1923. However, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1922 and died on February 15, 1924.
His ashes were divided between the Kinoshita family temple of Daiko-ji in Okayama and Yanaka Cemetery in Tokyo.
