Yosano Akiko (1878-1942)
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senzenwomenYosano Akiko was born in 1878 in south Osaka, where her family ran a sweetshop. Her birthname was Hō Shō. She was notable from early youth for her beauty and her bookworm tendencies, reading the classics while she minded the shop counter after school and writing waka poems in her head while she wrapped yokan jelly sweets. In 1900 she submitted seven poems to the Myojo [Morning Star] literary magazine, edited by the poet Yosano Tekkan, who accepted six of them. When he came to give a lecture in Osaka the same year, she fell in love with him on the spot, although he was already married. She and another young poet, Yamakawa Tomiko, were best friends and rivals for Tekkan’s affection until Tomiko married another man; in 1901, when Tekkan had divorced his first wife, he and Sho, now called Akiko, were married.
In August of the same year, Akiko published a collection of poems called Midaregami [Tangled Hair], mostly love poems inspired by her relationship with Tekkan. It became a runaway hit, although also facing criticism for its “immorality.” In 1904, when the Russo-Japanese War broke out, she published a poem in Myojo called “Kimi shinitamau koto nakare [Don’t die for your country’s sake],” addressed to her younger brother. In response to criticism of the poem as anti-war (ie unpatriotic), she retorted in print, “What young woman is in favor of war?” (However, her wartime poems from the Pacific War, thirty-odd years later, were much more conventionally patriotic in tone.)
As his wife’s star rose, Tekkan was losing confidence in his own writing; he closed down Myojo in 1908. To give him a fresh start, Akiko stood him a trip to Paris, paying his travel fees by selling screens calligraphed with poetry to her acquaintances. In 1912, he wrote to suggest that she join him in Europe, not just for the pleasure of travel but as a sop to her grief for the poet Ishikawa Takuboku, who had died that year at the age of twenty-six and had been like a little brother to her. Akiko left her seven children in Japan and set off to enjoy traveling around Europe with her husband.
She was later to bear five more children, two of them named Auguste (after Rodin) and Helene in honor of the voyage to France. In addition to her quantities of poetry (which she published in the feminist magazine Seito [Bluestocking] among elsewhere), she became a well-regarded critic as well. In 1916 she and Hiratsuka Raicho began their “motherhood debate,” in which Raicho argued that children belonged essentially to society and Akiko retorted that children were to be raised under the auspices of their own mothers, not the state (although three of her daughters were fostered out elsewhere, and she once applied for welfare and was turned down).
Tekkan (now using his original name of Hiroshi) became a professor at Keio University in 1919 (Mori Ogai had originally proposed Akiko herself for the position). In 1921, Akiko worked with Nishimura Isaku, Kawasaki Natsu, Yamada Kosaku, Edward Gauntlett and others to found Bunka Gakuin, a coeducational school—the first in Japan—with a focus on culture and the arts, intended to offer freedom and creativity unrestricted by Japan’s laws on education [the more things change], where she served as dean and lecturer; her daughter Nanase was among the students. The school remained open until 2018 and has a long and distinguished list of graduates in the arts.
Tekkan died in 1935. Akiko, undaunted, published her own translation into modern Japanese of the Tale of Genji before following her husband in 1942.
Sources
Nakae, Mori 1996, 2008, 2014, Shimamoto
https://voyapon.com/akiko-yosano-japanese-poet/ (English) Summary article with various photos
https://apjjf.org/roger-pulvers/3296/article (English) Selection of translated poems from Midaregami
https://culture-in-criticism.blogspot.com/2015/08/opinion-poem-thou-shalt-not-die-by.html (English) Translations and commentary/links on “Kimi shinitamau koto nakare”
In August of the same year, Akiko published a collection of poems called Midaregami [Tangled Hair], mostly love poems inspired by her relationship with Tekkan. It became a runaway hit, although also facing criticism for its “immorality.” In 1904, when the Russo-Japanese War broke out, she published a poem in Myojo called “Kimi shinitamau koto nakare [Don’t die for your country’s sake],” addressed to her younger brother. In response to criticism of the poem as anti-war (ie unpatriotic), she retorted in print, “What young woman is in favor of war?” (However, her wartime poems from the Pacific War, thirty-odd years later, were much more conventionally patriotic in tone.)
As his wife’s star rose, Tekkan was losing confidence in his own writing; he closed down Myojo in 1908. To give him a fresh start, Akiko stood him a trip to Paris, paying his travel fees by selling screens calligraphed with poetry to her acquaintances. In 1912, he wrote to suggest that she join him in Europe, not just for the pleasure of travel but as a sop to her grief for the poet Ishikawa Takuboku, who had died that year at the age of twenty-six and had been like a little brother to her. Akiko left her seven children in Japan and set off to enjoy traveling around Europe with her husband.
She was later to bear five more children, two of them named Auguste (after Rodin) and Helene in honor of the voyage to France. In addition to her quantities of poetry (which she published in the feminist magazine Seito [Bluestocking] among elsewhere), she became a well-regarded critic as well. In 1916 she and Hiratsuka Raicho began their “motherhood debate,” in which Raicho argued that children belonged essentially to society and Akiko retorted that children were to be raised under the auspices of their own mothers, not the state (although three of her daughters were fostered out elsewhere, and she once applied for welfare and was turned down).
Tekkan (now using his original name of Hiroshi) became a professor at Keio University in 1919 (Mori Ogai had originally proposed Akiko herself for the position). In 1921, Akiko worked with Nishimura Isaku, Kawasaki Natsu, Yamada Kosaku, Edward Gauntlett and others to found Bunka Gakuin, a coeducational school—the first in Japan—with a focus on culture and the arts, intended to offer freedom and creativity unrestricted by Japan’s laws on education [the more things change], where she served as dean and lecturer; her daughter Nanase was among the students. The school remained open until 2018 and has a long and distinguished list of graduates in the arts.
Tekkan died in 1935. Akiko, undaunted, published her own translation into modern Japanese of the Tale of Genji before following her husband in 1942.
Sources
Nakae, Mori 1996, 2008, 2014, Shimamoto
https://voyapon.com/akiko-yosano-japanese-poet/ (English) Summary article with various photos
https://apjjf.org/roger-pulvers/3296/article (English) Selection of translated poems from Midaregami
https://culture-in-criticism.blogspot.com/2015/08/opinion-poem-thou-shalt-not-die-by.html (English) Translations and commentary/links on “Kimi shinitamau koto nakare”
