Born in 1886 in Hitto Village, Minamiiwate District, Iwate (today Morioka), as the eldest son of Ishikawa Ittei, the head priest of the Soto-Zen Joko-ji. His given name was Hajime. When he was one, his father transferred to head priest of Hotoku-ji in Shibutami Village, where Takuboku spent his boyhood. He entered Morioka Middle School but, absorbed in literature and faring poorly in his studies, dropped out in 1902 and went up to Tokyo. He studied under Yosano Tekkan and Akiko of 'Myojo' and emerged as a Romantic poet. In 1905 he published his first poetry collection 'Akogare' (Longing) at 19 and married Setsuko. In 1906 he became a substitute teacher at Shibutami Higher Elementary School but the following year clashed with the principal and was dismissed. He crossed to Hokkaido and moved among Hakodate, Sapporo, Otaru, and Kushiro as a newspaper reporter. In 1908, seeking a livelihood, he went up alone to Tokyo and became a proofreader at the Tokyo Asahi Shimbun, but poverty and illness were unrelenting. In 1910 he published his first tanka collection 'Ichiaku no Suna' (A Handful of Sand, 551 verses), centered on poems of life, in the innovative three-line form, and instantly drew attention with verses like 'On the white sand of an islet of the Eastern Sea I, weeping wet, played with a crab.' Shocked the same year by the High Treason Incident, he was drawn to socialism and wrote the essay 'The Present Stagnation of the Age.' On April 13, 1912, he died of pulmonary tuberculosis at his home in Hisakata-cho, Koishikawa Ward, at 26, attended by his father, Wakayama Bokusui, and his wife Setsuko. After his death, in June 1912, his second tanka collection 'Kanashiki Gangu' (Sad Toys) was published.

He combined a Romantic spirit aflame with ideals and a sharp social sense that looked life's hardships in the face. A double sided man — a poet of delicate sensibility and a socialist of fierce passion. While in straits and piling up debts, he kept his diary in Romaji to the last and never let his attitude toward art slip. With plain words such as 'A day when all my friends seem greater than I — I buy flowers, come home, and grow close to my wife,' he reached a unique poetic ground that expressed deep sorrow.

He brought to modern tanka the twin reforms of 'poems of life' and the 'three-line form.' 'A Handful of Sand' is still read as a national tanka collection, with many of its verses chosen for textbooks. Many poetry monuments stand in places connected to him — Morioka, Shibutami, Hakodate, Tokyo, Kushiro — and especially the Ishikawa Takuboku Memorial Museum in Morioka, Iwate (the former Shibutami Higher Elementary School) and the Ishikawa Takuboku family grave in Hakodate are pilgrimage sites. His late socialist-leaning poems left great influence on the postwar left, and even today many lyricists and singers — Oda Kazumasa, Matsumoto Takashi — quote Takuboku.