Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 31. Chapters: Eiji Sawamura, Fumio Fujimura, Haruyasu Nakajima, Hideo Fujimoto, Hiromitsu Kadota, Hiromori Kawashima, Hisashi Yamada, Horace Wilson (professor), Ichiro Yoshikuni, Isao Harimoto, Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame, Katsuya Nomura, Kazuhiro Yamauchi, Kazuhisa Inao, Lefty O'Doul, Masaichi Kaneda, Masaoka Shiki, Masao Yoshida, Masaru Kageura, Matsutar Sh riki, Meikyukai, Michio Nishizawa, Motoshi Fujita, Sachio Kinugasa, Sadaharu Oh, Shigeo Nagashima, Shosei Go, Shunichi Amachi, Tadashi Sugiura, Tadashi Wakabayashi, Takao Kajimoto, Takehiko Bessho, Tatsuro Hirooka, Tetsuharu Kawakami, Tetsuya Yoneda, Tokuro Konishi, Tsuneo Horiuchi, Victor Starffin, Wally Yonamine, Yoshio Yoshida, Yoshiyuki Iwamoto, Yukio Nishimoto, Yutaka Fukumoto. Excerpt: Masaoka Shiki, October 14, 1867 - September 19, 1902), pen-name of Masaoka Noboru ( ), was a Japanese poet, author, and literary critic in Meiji period Japan. Shiki is regarded as a major figure in the development of modern haiku poetry. He also wrote on reform of tanka poetry. Some consider Shiki to be one of the four great haiku masters, the others being: Matsuo Bash, Yosa Buson, and Kobayashi Issa. Shiki, or rather Tsunenori ( ) as he was originally named, was born in Matsuyama city in Iyo province (present day Ehime prefecture) to a samurai class family of modest means. As a child, he was called Tokoronosuke ( ); in adolescence, his name was changed to Noboru ( ). His father, Tsunenao, was an alcoholic who died when Shiki was five years of age, but his mother, Yae, was a daughter of hara Kanzan, a Confucian scholar. Kanzan was the first of Shiki's extra-school tutors, and at the age of 7 the young boy began reading Mencius under his tutelage. Shiki later confessed to being a less-than-diligent student. At age 15 Shiki became something of a political radical, attaching himself to the then-waning Freedom and People's Rights Movement and getting himself banned from public speaking by the principal of Matsuyama Middle School, which he was attending. Around this time he developed an interest in moving to Tokyo and did so in 1883. The young Shiki first attended his hometown Matsuyama Middle School, where Kisama Jifuku, a leader of the discredited Freedom and People's Rights Movement, had recently served as principal. In 1883, a maternal uncle arranged for Shiki to come to Tokyo, and he was first enrolled in Ky ritsu Middle School and later matriculated into University Preparatory School (Daigaku Yobimon) affiliated with Imperial University (Teikoku Daigaku). While studying here, the teenage Shiki enjoyed playing baseball and befriended fellow student Natsume S seki, who would go on to become a famous novelist. He entered Imperial University in 1890. But by 18