Ido Reizan

Portrait of Ido Reizan (井土霊山)

Template:Japanese name Ido Reizan (井土 霊山) (1859–1935) was a Japanese journalist, writer, poet, and liberal activist. He was involved in Freedom and People's Rights Movement (自由民権運動, Jiyū Minken Undō), which appears to have forced him into a nomadic lifestyle.

Biography

Reizan was born Wada Tsuneshige into a family of samurai in Sōma Nakamura han and later married into the Idos, who were an Azabu-stationed samurai family. His wife was Ido Sumi.

Reizan attended and graduated from the Sendai Teaching College, which in the Meiji period became the Faculty of Education of Tohoku University.

In a professional capacity, he worked as a journalist and an editor-in-chief at various newspapers including Osaka Mainichi Shimbun, Sanyo Shimbun, and Tokyo Yokohama Shimbun.

Reizan was a prolific writer who wrote and edited 27 books, the subjects of which ranged from criminal law to Chinese poetry.

Reizan advocated the establishment of the University of Manchuria (満州大学), which he thought would be instrumental in introducing modernity to Manchuria and China. (1905 満洲富籤策 Manshu tomikujisaku. pp. 25-30) His proposition to provide peoples in Manchuria and China with higher education predates the establishment of the National Foundation University (建国大学 Kenkoku Daigaku) by 33 years.

External links

• 11 of Reizan's works are viewable at Digital Library from the Meiji Era.
• The website of Reizan's great-grandchild
• Reizan's Chinese poem that appeared in Taiwan Times

Sources

• Wakamatsu, Jotaro. 2002. Reizan - Ido Tsuneshige. Fukushima-Jiyujin, vol. 17. (Reprinted in The Proceedings of Fukushima Jiyu Minken Daigaku Soma Taikai. pp. 49-61.)
• 1992. Kyodo yukari no sakkatachi. Kyoiku Fukushima, vol. 0166. p. 48.