His father, Horiguchi Kumaichi was the son of ex-samurai from Echigo and a career diplomat with the Foreign Ministry who was the Japanese consul at Incheon during the First Sino-Japanese War.

He first spent over a year in Mexico, where he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, causing Horiguchi to abandon his father's hope that he become a diplomat, and he devoted his time to writing verse and translation of French works instead.

He subsequently lived for brief periods in Spain, Paris, Brazil and Romania and maintained correspondence with Marie Laurencin and Thomas Mann, whose works he also translated while recuperating at a sanatorium in Switzerland.

On returning to Japan in 1925, he brought out a collection of poems Gekka no ichigun, which introduced the Japanese literary world to the works of Jean Cocteau, Raymond Radiguet, Paul Verlaine, and Guillaume Apollinaire.

In addition, his translation of Paul Morand's Ouvert la nuit (Yo hiraku; Night opens) had a strong impact on the Shinkankakuha, or the New Sensation School whose best-known exponent was Yokomitsu Riichi.

However, spoke out against the increasing militarization of Japan, and after promulgation of the National Mobilization Law, went into self-imposed confinement at a hotel on the shores of Lake Nojiri, continuing with his translations of French literature under the ever more vigilant eyes of the censors.

In 1967, his submission of poetry in the traditional Japanese style for the Utakai Hajime contest at the Imperial Palace on the topic of fish drew praise from Emperor Hirohito (an amateur marine biologist), and Horiguchi was awarded the 3rd class of the Order of the Sacred Treasures.