What is the name of the haiku magazine founded by Masaoka Shiki in 1897?

The haiku magazine associated with Masaoka Shiki and founded in 1897 was Hototogisu. The magazine began in Matsuyama, where Yanagihara Kyokudō established it under Shiki’s direction, and it soon became the leading forum for Shiki’s modernizing school of haiku.

Hototogisu takes its name from the Japanese word for the lesser cuckoo, the bird referenced by Shiki’s pen name. In Japanese literary tradition, the bird was imagined as singing while coughing blood, making the title especially resonant for a poet suffering from tuberculosis.

In 1898, the magazine’s headquarters moved to Tokyo, and Takahama Kyoshi took over its editorship. Its scope expanded beyond haiku to include tanka and haibun, a prose-and-poetry form. The periodical also helped launch and support important literary careers; Natsume Sōseki’s novel I Am a Cat first appeared in it in 1905.

The main historical nuance is that Shiki guided the magazine rather than acting as its sole founder in the modern corporate sense. Yanagihara Kyokudō founded it, while Shiki supplied the intellectual direction and school it represented. The magazine continued after Shiki’s death in 1902 and remains one of Japan’s best-known haiku periodicals.