石原吉郎

Born 1915, in Izu, Shizuoka prefecture, Japan. After he graduated from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, he got interested in Christianity and got baptized in 1938, at the age of twenty three. He planned to study theology and to enter a theology college. Then he had a call to join World War II, and was stationed at China as an imformation officer. He could understand Russian. In 1945, he became P.O.W.(a prisoner of war)of Russia(at that time, the Soviet Union), and was sentenced twenty five years' prison. After he spent eight years in a prison camp in Siberia, he was relieved by Stalin's amnesty. He returned to Japan in 1953. After that, he started to write poems, joining a poetry magazine, "Rocinante"(a name of a horse of Don Quixote). In 1964, he published his first poetry book, "Returning Home of Sancho Panza", by which he was awarded Mr.H Poetry Prize. After that, he also kept publishing many essay and poetry books. On November 14, 1977, at the age of sixty two, he died during a bath at his home for an acute heart attack. He is one of the representatives of Japanese Christian writers. (Source: odn.de.jp)