was a Japanese novelist and journalist.

Born in Okayama into a shizoku (former samurai

Samurai

is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...

) family, he travelled to Tokyo to join the army but instead joined the Kenyūsha

Kenyusha

Kenyūsha was a writers' society in Meiji era Japan, chiefly led by Ozaki Kōyō. Its other members included Kawakami Bizan....

 literary society and quickly became celebrated during the Sino-Japanese War

Sino-Japanese War

There were two wars known as the Sino-Japanese War :* The First Sino-Japanese War between China and Japan , primarily over control of Korea....

 for his patriotic stories in the newspaper Chūō Shinbun.

A pillar of the Meiji-era literary establishment, and the editor of Kobe Shinbun and Taiheiyo as well as Senshibankō and Kozakuraodoshi, his writing is marred for modern readers by its imperialist

Imperialism

Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...

 outlook, one example being Osero, a new version of Othello

Othello

The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...

commissioned for the Otojiro Kawakami

Otojiro Kawakami

was a Japanese actor and comedian from present-day Hakata-ku, Fukuoka, who led the Kawakami Theatre Troupe on successful overseas tours in 1899-1901...

 troupe and set in the Taiwan

Taiwan

Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

 of 1903, in which the Othello figure, the governor Lt. Gen. Muro Washirō, is a Japanese burakumin

Burakumin

are a Japanese social minority group. The burakumin are one of the main minority groups in Japan, along with the Ainu of Hokkaidō, the Ryukyuans of Okinawa and Japanese residents of Korean and Chinese descent....

who has been sent to the island to suppress a rebellion.

He was the first to refer to sumo

Sumo

is a competitive full-contact sport where a wrestler attempts to force another wrestler out of a circular ring or to touch the ground with anything other than the soles of the feet. The sport originated in Japan, the only country where it is practiced professionally...

 as the national sport

National sport

A national sport or national pastime is a sport or game that is considered to be an intrinsic part of the culture of a nation. Some sports are de facto national sports, as baseball is in the U.S., while others are de jure as lacrosse and ice hockey are in Canada.-De jure national sports:-De facto...

 (kokugi), inspiring the name of the Ryōgoku Kokugikan

Ryogoku Kokugikan

, also known as Sumo Hall, is an indoor sporting arena located in the Ryōgoku neighborhood of Sumida, one of the 23 wards of Tokyo in Japan, next to the Edo-Tokyo Museum. It is the third building built in Tokyo associated with the name kokugikan. The current building was opened in 1985 and has a...

 stadium built in 1909. He died in Matsuyama.