Yamada Waka (1879-1957)
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senzenwomenYamada Waka was born in 1879 in Kanagawa, where her family were farmers; her maiden name was Asaba. Although she did well in elementary school, her family did not permit her, as a girl, to study further, instead giving her farm and housework tasks and marrying her off at sixteen. At this point her birth family came down in the world; in order to support them, having been refused help by her pennypincher husband, at the age of eighteen she went to Yokohama, the nearest big city, to find work. Instead, she was kidnapped and taken to Seattle in the US to work as a prostitute, where she was called “O-Yae of Arabia.”
Three years later, she encountered the Japanese journalist Tachii Nobusaburo (there is no agreement on how to pronounce either his first or last names, he could be Tachii or Ritsui or Tatei, Nobusaburo or Shinzaburo, and he seems, probably fittingly, to have been entirely lost to history except as an adjunct to Waka’s story)), who helped her escape to San Francisco. When he proved to have designs on her of his own, she fled to the Cameron House, a mission which offered shelter to sex workers. There she became a Christian and studied English. In 1903, at twenty-four, she met and married Yamada Kakichi, a sociologist and English teacher, and returned with him in 1906 to Japan.
Yamada Kakichi’s students in Japan included the extraordinary anarchist Osugi Sakae as well as his latterday wife Ito Noe, Hiratsuka Raicho, Ichikawa Fusae, and Yoshiya Nobuko. Waka became a regular contributor to Hiratsuka Raicho’s Seito [Bluestocking] journal, translating the works of Ellen Key (a major influence on Japanese feminism of the time) and Olive Schreiner in addition to writing her own essays. As a women’s rights activist, she was notable for her focus on women’s maternal tendencies, based in Key’s work, in contrast to many of her contemporaries (she and Raicho were on opposite sides of the debate from Yosano Akiko and Yamakawa Kikue), and for her refusal to conceal her past as a forced sex worker, instead using her experience to work against prostitution. Along with Raicho, Fusae, and Oku Mumeo, she was instrumental in founding the New Women’s Association in 1912, working toward political, educational, and employment equality for women in Japan.
In 1937 she gave a lecture tour in the US, visiting Eleanor Roosevelt at the White House; the following year she opened a shelter for victims of domestic violence in Japan. During World War II, her stance on women lined up with the Imperial policy of good wives and wise mothers, keeping her in good odor with the government; she visited Germany and Italy in 1941 and came back praising the German attitude toward motherhood. After the war, distressed by the prevalence of sex workers available to American soldiers in Japan, she opened a home teaching former sex workers useful skills. She died in 1957.
Sources
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14672715.1980.10405590 (English) Book review of a Japanese-language biography of Yamada, including a charming photograph of Waka and her husband
Note: I don’t know why none of my usual reference books has a section on Yamada Waka; she is by no means a minor figure, certainly compared to some of the people they do include. A pity.
Three years later, she encountered the Japanese journalist Tachii Nobusaburo (there is no agreement on how to pronounce either his first or last names, he could be Tachii or Ritsui or Tatei, Nobusaburo or Shinzaburo, and he seems, probably fittingly, to have been entirely lost to history except as an adjunct to Waka’s story)), who helped her escape to San Francisco. When he proved to have designs on her of his own, she fled to the Cameron House, a mission which offered shelter to sex workers. There she became a Christian and studied English. In 1903, at twenty-four, she met and married Yamada Kakichi, a sociologist and English teacher, and returned with him in 1906 to Japan.
Yamada Kakichi’s students in Japan included the extraordinary anarchist Osugi Sakae as well as his latterday wife Ito Noe, Hiratsuka Raicho, Ichikawa Fusae, and Yoshiya Nobuko. Waka became a regular contributor to Hiratsuka Raicho’s Seito [Bluestocking] journal, translating the works of Ellen Key (a major influence on Japanese feminism of the time) and Olive Schreiner in addition to writing her own essays. As a women’s rights activist, she was notable for her focus on women’s maternal tendencies, based in Key’s work, in contrast to many of her contemporaries (she and Raicho were on opposite sides of the debate from Yosano Akiko and Yamakawa Kikue), and for her refusal to conceal her past as a forced sex worker, instead using her experience to work against prostitution. Along with Raicho, Fusae, and Oku Mumeo, she was instrumental in founding the New Women’s Association in 1912, working toward political, educational, and employment equality for women in Japan.
In 1937 she gave a lecture tour in the US, visiting Eleanor Roosevelt at the White House; the following year she opened a shelter for victims of domestic violence in Japan. During World War II, her stance on women lined up with the Imperial policy of good wives and wise mothers, keeping her in good odor with the government; she visited Germany and Italy in 1941 and came back praising the German attitude toward motherhood. After the war, distressed by the prevalence of sex workers available to American soldiers in Japan, she opened a home teaching former sex workers useful skills. She died in 1957.
Sources
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14672715.1980.10405590 (English) Book review of a Japanese-language biography of Yamada, including a charming photograph of Waka and her husband
Note: I don’t know why none of my usual reference books has a section on Yamada Waka; she is by no means a minor figure, certainly compared to some of the people they do include. A pity.
