Yosano Akiko

Yosano Shō (与謝野 志やう; née Hō (鳳); 7 December 1878 – 29 May 1942), known by her pen name Yosano Akiko (Shinjitai: 与謝野 晶子, Kyūjitai: 與謝野 晶子, Japanese pronunciation: [jo.sa.no (|) aꜜ.kʲi̥.ko]), was a Japanese author, poet, feminist, pacifist, and social reformer, active from the late Meiji era through the Taishō and early Shōwa eras of Japan. She is one of the most noted, and most controversial, post-classical female poets of the country.

Early life

Yosano was born as Hō Shō (鳳 志やう) into a prosperous merchant family in Sakai, near Osaka. From the age of 11, she was the family member most responsible for running the family business, which produced and sold yōkan, a type of confection. From early childhood, Yosano was fond of reading literary works, and read widely in her father's extensive library. As a high school student, she began to subscribe to the poetry magazine Myōjō (Bright Star), of which she became a prominent contributor. Myōjō's editor, Tekkan Yosano, whom she later married, taught her tanka poetry, having met her on visits to Osaka and Sakai to deliver lectures and teach workshops.

In her youth, Yosano had not been allowed opportunities to interact with the opposite sex, which she cited as the cause for her latent sexuality. She was not allowed to leave her home unaccompanied and could count the number of times she had crossed the threshold of someone else's home. After being married she reflected negatively upon her childhood, saying, "I realized for the first time how jaundiced, unfair, and dark my childhood had been."

Tekkan was married when he met Akiko, and left his wife for her a year after they met one another. The two poets started a new life together in a suburb of Tokyo. They married in 1901, when Yosano was 23, and went on to have 13 children, 11 of whom lived to adulthood. Tekkan had extramarital affairs during their marriage, including with his ex-wife.

Midaregami

In 1901, Yosano brought out her first volume of tanka, Midaregami (Tangled Hair), which contained 399 poems and was mostly denounced by literary critics. The majority are love poems through which Akiko expresses her feelings toward Tekkan Yosano. It was through this particular collection that she set an image for herself as well as the stage for female voices in modern Japan. The poems tended to express femininity in a manner unconventional for her time, especially from a female writer. In traditional Japanese values, women are perceived as (and are expected to be) gentle and modest. The domestic and societal roles of Japanese women were and are focused on procreation and raising children, especially boys. Midaregami not only expressed concepts and/or issues that pertain to women and were not normally voiced in such a public manner, but also created a new, revolutionary image of womanhood, as lively, free, sexual, and assertive, nothing at all like the conventional picture of the expected modest, demure young lady. Yosano's women were not passive, but active agents of their love lives. In a typical tanka, Yosano wrote: "'Spring is short; what is there that has eternal life?' I said, and made his hands seek out my powerful breasts." The Midaregami posed a challenge to the patriarchal values of Japanese society, as well as to the accepted literary and cultural conventions of her time.

Although Akiko Yosano's work was denounced and severely criticized, it served as a great source of inspiration to women of her day. The collection was widely read and became a sort of lighthouse for free-thinkers of the time. Her first book, by far her best-known, brought a passionate individualism to traditional tanka poetry, unlike any other work of the late Meiji period. The American scholar Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase wrote, "The visual representations of flesh, lips and breasts symbolize women's sexuality".

No poet had written of breasts in a tanka before, which led the poet Nobutsuna Sasaki to attack her in a magazine article for "corrupting public morals" and "mouthing obscenities fit for a whore". From the examples in the Midaregami, the idea of nudity changed the way Japanese people viewed eroticism and female sexuality. Up until this point women's breasts were a symbol for child feeding and motherhood. From then on they began to take on a different representation; that of natural beauty, and especially that of young women. A door was opened for Japanese women to imagine new representations of sexuality and the female body.

A poet's life

Yosano followed Midaregami with twenty more tanka anthologies over the course of her career, including Koigoromo (Robe of Love) and Maihime (Dancer). Her husband Tekkan, the poet's reputation was eclipsed by hers. He continued to publish his wife's work and to encourage her in her career. Yosano was an extraordinarily prolific writer. She could produce as many as 50 poems in one sitting. During the course of her lifetime, Yosano is thought to have written between 20,000 and 50,000 poems. She also wrote 11 books of prose, many of which were neglected by contemporary literary critics and audiences.

Yosano helped to found what was originally a girls' school, the Bunka Gakuin (Institute of Culture), together with Nishimura Isaku, Natsu Kawasaki and others, and became its first dean and chief lecturer. She assisted many aspiring writers to gain a foothold in the literary world. She was a lifelong advocate of women's education. She also translated the Japanese classics into modern Japanese, including the Shinyaku Genji Monogatari (Newly Translated Tale of Genji) and Shinyaku Eiga Monogatari (Newly Translated Tale of Flowering Fortunes).

Yosano's poem Kimi Shinitamou koto nakare (君死にたもうこと勿れ, Thou Shalt Not Die), addressed to her younger brother, was published in Myōjō during the height of the Russo-Japanese War and was extremely controversial. Made into a song, it was used as a mild form of anti-war protest, as the number of Japanese casualties from the bloody Siege of Port Arthur became public. In September 1904, Yosano had learned that Japanese soldiers at Port Arthur were being used as "human bullets", being strapped with explosives and sent to blast holes through the Russian barbed wire entanglements in suicide missions. Yosano's younger brother was serving in the Imperial Army and attached to the forces besieging Port Arthur. In Bushido, it was the highest honor for a man to die for the Emperor, and knowing of her brother's impulsive nature, Yosano was seized with the fear that he might volunteer to be a "human bullet", inspiring her to write a poem pleading with him to think of his widowed mother.

Addressed to her brother, Yosano wrote: "Did our parents make you grasp the sword and teach you to kill? For you what does it matter whether the fortress of Lüshun [Port Arthur] falls or not?" Yosano attacked the central concept of Bushido in the Kimi, noting that it was the greatest honor for a man to die for the Emperor, who she sarcastically noted never put himself in harm's way, expecting others to die for him. For calling the war with Russia senseless and stupid, Yosano made herself into Japan's most controversial poet, and the government attempted to ban her poem. The Kimi was so unpopular that Yosano's house was stoned by angry people while she became involved in a rancorous debate with the journalist Ōmachi Keigetsu over the question of whether poets had the duty to support the war or not.

The first issue of the literary journal Seito in September 1911 featured her poem "The Day the Mountains Move" asking for woman to be given equal rights. In a 1918 article, Yosano attacked "the ruling and military class which deliberately block the adoption of a truly moral system in an effort to protect the wealth and influence of their families...They hurry to invoke the power and precepts of the old totalitarian moral codes to direct the lives of Japanese citizens". Yosano ended her article by calling militarism a form of "barbarian thinking which is the responsibility of us women to eradicate from our midst".

Yosano gave birth to 13 children, of whom 11 survived to adulthood. The late Japanese politician Yosano Kaoru was one of her grandsons.

Feminist perspective

Yosano Akiko frequently wrote for the all-women literary magazine Seitō (Bluestocking), as well as other publications. Her opinions were rooted in the concept of equally partaking in child rearing, financial independence, and social responsibility.