Mitsuhashi Toshio (1920-2001) joined a haiku group at age fifteen, and his haiku began to be accepted by magazines the following year. He was drawn to the Shinkō Haiku (Newly Rising Haiku) movement, particularly its advocacy of rejecting the required inclusion of seasonal words.

In 1937, when Japan expanded its war in China to distance themselves from “traditional haiku” started writing what they called senka sobo haiku—haiku “imagining and watching the fire of war from afar.” Mitsuhashi wrote many haiku in this genre.