Yoshirou Ishihara

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 warof Russiaat 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 Stalins amnesty. He returned to Japan in 1953. After that he started to write poems joining a poetry magazine Rocinantea 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