Background
Yagi Jukichi was born on February 9, 1898 in what is now part of the city of Machida near Tokyo, Japan.
八木 重吉
Yagi Jukichi was born on February 9, 1898 in what is now part of the city of Machida near Tokyo, Japan.
Yagi Jukichi attended the Kanagawa Prefectural Normal School, then located in Kamakura, Kanagawa prefecture and graduated from Tokyo Higher Normal School.
After graduation, Yagi Jukichi taught at the Mikage Normal School in Hyogo Prefecture, and began to write verse as an expression of his faith. He was very much inspired by the poems of John Keats, to whom he dedicated a number of his poems. Yagi Jukichi published his first collection, Aki no Hitome (Autumn Eye) in 1925. Although he contributed several pieces to poetry magazines, he remained shy of literary circles.
Hospitalized with tuberculosis in Chigasaki, Kanagawa in 1926, Yagi Jukichi died on October 26, 1927. Only after his death and the publication of Mazushiki Shinto (Humble Believer), Yagi Jukichi Shishu (Yagi Jukichi Anthology), and Kami O Yobu (Talk to God) did he gain widespread recognition.
(This book is dedicated to the erection of a new sanctuary...)
(Japanese edition)
(Japanese edition)
In 1919, Yagi Jukichi was baptized at the Komagome Christian Church in Tokyo. He remained a devout Protestant all his short life, but later moved to the Non-Church Christianity (Mukyokai) as advocated by Uchimura Kanzo.