In summer 2004, Keiko Mitsumoto, who presides over a group devoted to tanka poetry, received an anonymous, but curious, inquiry seeking to join up.
"Can I join your group and learn about tanka even though I am a death-row inmate?" the letter said. That was the start of an exchange of poetry and letters between Mitsumoto, 61, and Kaoru Okashita, 60.
Since then, Okashita, who was convicted of killing two people in 1989, has sent around 10 tanka every month to Mitsumoto in Nagano Prefecture, and she has returned them to the Tokyo Detention House with suggestions.