Masaoka Shiki
Poet
Japanese poet, author, and critic who is best known for his haiku poetry. He also wrote numerous critical essays on the subject of Japanese tanka poetry.
He suffered from tuberculosis during most of his life and died from the illness at the young age of thirty-five.
He enjoyed baseball during his teenage years and was posthumously awarded membership in the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame.
He was born into a family of the Japanese Samurai class, and his mother was the child of a Confucian scholar.
He was born in the same year in which renowned author Charles Baudelaire died.