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Tayama Katai was born near Tokyo in Gumma Prefecture in 1872, four years after the Meiji Restoration. His given name was Rokuya and he was the fourth of five children. His father Shōjurō was a lower class samurai and his mother Tetsu was a daughter of Tayama Gazō of a related samurai family. When Katai was five years old, he lost his father who had been a metropolitan police officer. His father was killed in Higo during the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877 in a fight between the government forces and the samurais; as a result of this misfortune Katai completed only three years of elementary schooling. When he was nine years old, he went to Tokyo with his grandfather to work as an apprentice in a bookstore. About a year later Katai, due to some wrong doing on his part, was sent home to Gunma prefecture accompanied by his elder brother Miyato.

When he was eleven Katai went back to school in his home town in Gumma to improve his education, as he found that he was not cut out for the type of merchant's work he was doing in a bookstore. He studied literary Chinese under Yoshida Rōken, formerly a teacher of several feudal lords. Three years later his family went to Tokyo where his brother Miyato had secured a position.