Despite his brief life, Takuboku Ishikawa (1886-1912) is considered one of the fundamental Japanese poets of the 20th century. Abandoning the traditional themes of the wakas or tankas, he incorporated into his poetry the various feelings of daily life in a plain and colloquial language, with the original inspiration typical of modern man. In this sense, Takuboku tankas can be considered revolutionary. The poet always showed sympathy for the oppressed. Throughout his difficult life he questioned injustice and the legal, political, and economic systems, and was especially concerned with codes regarding Japanese patriarchal and hierarchical relations. In May 1905 he published his first book of poems, Akogare (Longing) with the financial support of his high school friends, and that same month he married Setsuko Horiai, whom he had fallen in love with since his student days. His daughter Kyoko was born in late 1906. In 1908 he had one of those creative periods that occurs only in a few portents. Inspired, he composed at least 246 tankas in 50 hours, from the early hours of June 24 to 2 in the morning of 26. In 1909 he wrote his Diary in Roomaji, that is, in Japanese transcribed with Roman letters u Westerners, that only he could read, in which he scrutinized himself as well as the surrounding world with total sincerity, practicing a kind of vivisection. Before dying, the poet promised to leave his diaries to a friend, asking him: "If you think they are not good, burn them." His wife, shortly before his death, gave them to his brother-in-law, saying: "My husband told me to burn them, but my love for them has prevented me from doing so after all." In October of the following year a son was born to them, who died the same month. Precisely on the day of the birth of his son, the Toundoo publishing house paid Takuboku twenty yen for his second volume of poems, Ichiaku no suna (A Handful of Sand) published in December 1910, a sum that Takuboku dedicated entirely to paying for the burial of his son. Some of the most tense moments in Takuboku's life are reflected in the tank of Sad Toys (Kanashiki gangu), written in the last year and a half of his life and published posthumously by his friends. Takuboku succumbed to tuberculosis on April 13, 1912, a month after his mother, who died of the same disease, as did his wife, on May 5, 1913.