Tazuo Basho Yamaguchi is a Japanese-American poet and filmmaker, and both a national and world head-to-head haiku champion. He is also master of the English form of haiku and senryū. He has published four books of poetry, six recorded volumes, and produced the National Poetry Slam DVD from 2002 to 2007. Biography Early life He was born to Edward and Betty Yamaguchi in Tokyo, Japan, into a Japanese American family with direct royal descent to the royal shigin poets and samurai class of ancient Japan. Tazuo was named after his master shigin poet grandmother, Tazue Sakaguchi. He was diagnosed with bone cancer at the age of eleven, and was told his left arm would need to be amputated. It was estimated he had only seven more years to live. For treatment, his mother used alternative methods of healing. Business ventures In 1991, Yamaguchi was chosen from 8,000 applicants from around the world to work with George Lucas on several educational entertainment-based projects. During this internship with LucasFilm, he discovered the power of mythic storytelling through digital media. From 1992 to 1995, Yamaguchi ran a San Francisco-based company called Xstudios specialising in emerging digital technologies such as interactive media and computer-based training, and part of the multimedia revolution in the San Francisco Bay Area, where many companies were involved in integrating the traditional arts of storytelling, poetry, illustration, and the fine arts with emerging digital technologies. Poetry career In 1996, Yamaguchi participated in the 15th annual Taos Poetry Circus in Taos, New Mexico. He met Bob Holman, and was introduced to the 1981 Chicago-invented oral tradition of Al Simmons' Original World Heavyweight Poetry Bouts, which years later morphed into Poetry Slam. He then proceeded to take his film gear to Portland, Oregon to the 1996 National Poetry Slam. He filmed most of the event and participated in a haiku competition, a genre of poetry he had practiced since grade school, and became the "1996 National Head to Head Haiku Champion." He also collaborated with Paul Devlin, a national sport videographer and director of critically acclaimed slam poetry documentary SlamNation. In 2001 he produced his first documentary film, about the Asian American spoken word national movement, called Pass it Around (PIA). In 1997, Yamaguchi formed the first National "poetry slam" team from northern California with Sacramento-based jazz poet Mario Ellis Hill, punk poet Matt Rouse, and bluesman from Grass Valley, John Barbato.