Teijo was born on April 11, 1900, in
Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, in the village Ezu (now a district of modern-day
Kumamoto City). Born Hamako Saitō, Teijo was the only child of Heishirō Saitō, the village headman, and his wife Tei. In 1912, Teijo entered Kumamoto Prefectural Girl's High School (now Kumamoto Prefectural High School No. 1). Teijo graduated in 1918 and began submitting haiku to the literary magazine
Hototogisu the same year. She also sent in fan letters for
Hisajo Sugita, another female haiku poet who had begun publishing in the magazine the year prior. Later, after Sugita visited Ezu in September, 1921, the pair would become long-time correspondents. In 1920, Teijo married Shigeki Nakamura, a bureaucrat in the
Ministry of Finance. The pair moved several times for Shigeki's work, including to
Yokohama,
Sendai, and
Nagoya, before finally settling in
Tokyo. The couple had three children, including a son, their daughter Namiko, born in 1924, and another daughter. Teijo was named a
Person of Cultural Merit by the Japanese government in 1980 due to her poetic contributions, which provided her with a government pension in addition to national recognition. In 1984, she was awarded the
Japan Art Academy Prize for poetry, and officially listed as a distinguished citizen of both Tokyo and Kumamoto City for her work. Teijo died of heart failure on September 20, 1988, at
Tokyo Women's Medical University Hospital. Her grave is located in
Tsukiji Hongan-ji in
Suginami, Tokyo. Following Teijo's death in 1988, her oldest daughter, Namiko Ogawa, took over editorship of
Kazabana, and developed a reputation as a poet in her own right. == Literary career ==