Kazuo Honma

Kazuo Honma was born on October 7, 1915, in Mashike town in Hokkaido, to a wealthy sake brewing family which also headed the local fishermen's co-op. Around the age of five, Honma lost his sight due to cerebral meningitis and was admitted to Hakodate School for the Blind and Deaf when he was thirteen. There he encountered the world of braille and continued his studies at Kwansei Gakuin University, where he majored in English literature. Honma liked reading and always bemoaned the dearth of braille books. When he learned there was a braille library in London, and that it owned a collection of 170,000 titles, he decided to devote his life to founding the first braille library in Japan. With braille transcription service advocated by awareness activist Seiko Goto, many classics from all ages and cultures were added to the library's collection. In 1943, the first braille library was established in a two-storey wooden building. However, the Pacific War interrupted its operations in Tokyo. In 1944, Honma evacuated, carryingthe library's 2,300 braille books from Tokyo to Ibaraki prefecture. Even during this hard time, the collection steadily increased and the following year, Honma moved back to his hometown, carrying 3,000 books. In the meantime, both the library building and Honma's residence in Tokyo had been burned down during U.S. air raids. Until two years later after the war, he had no choice but to lend out the braille books from the library's temporary home in Mashike.