Akiko Sakai
Madame Akiko Sakai (a.k.a. Professor Sakai, Minister of Education)
Yosano was born 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, she 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), to which she became a prominent contributor. Myōjō's editor, Tekkan Yosano, taught her tanka poetry, having met her on visits to Osaka and Sakai to deliver lectures and teach in workshops, they later married.[4]
Yosano was not allowed opportunities to interact with the opposite sex, which she cites as the cause for her latent sexuality. She was not allowed to leave her home unaccompanied and could count the number of times she crossed the threshold of someone else's home. After being married she reflects poorly upon her childhood, "I realized for the first time how jaundiced, unfair, and dark my childhood had been."[5]
Yosano was married when she was 24, and went on to have 13 children, 11 of which lived to adulthood. The two poets started a new life together in the suburb of Tokyo and were married in 1901. Tekken was married when he met Akiko and left his wife for her a year after they met one another. Tekken had extramarital affairs during their marriage, including with his ex-wife.[6]
On financial independence
Yosano Akiko disagreed with the concept of mothers seeking financial independence through the help of the government, claiming that dependence on the state and dependence on men are one and the same. In her essay titled "Woman's Complete Independence," or Joshi no tettei shita dokuritsu (女性の徹底した独立), she says:
Even if the male has this kind of economic guarantee, if the woman still lacks it, then she should avoid marriage and childbirth. If a woman depends on her man's finances for marriage and childbirth, even if there is a romantic relationship between them, then the woman is economically dependent on him and becomes the man's slave, or otherwise, she is a thief who preys on the fruits of the man's labor.
This viewpoint was diametrically opposed to many Japanese feminists' shared opinion at the time that the government should financially support mothers, including one of the five founders of Seitō, Raichō Hiratsuka.[23] Raichō criticized this, saying that most women cannot realistically live without financial assistance.[24]
On motherhood
Despite giving birth to thirteen children in her lifetime, Yosano stated that she did not consider the act of giving birth to be the main part of her identity.[25] She also expressed worry that fully equating the identity of womanhood with motherhood prioritizes motherhood over the other aspects of a person.
I believe that making motherhood absolute and giving supremacy to motherhood, as Ellen Key does, among all the innumerable hopes and desires that arise as women undulate on the surface of life, serves to keep women entrapped in the old unrealistic way of thinking that gives a ranking to the innumerable desires and roles which should have equal value for the individual.
"Akiko had, in effect, redefined the meaning of the term and seized it as a tool of liberation. "Chastity" no longer meant safeguarding the womb; it meant the totality of a woman's sexuality, the totality of the female self, and the chastity of the self. Akiko saw that the emphasis on woman as a sexual object and her acceptance of that definition had had a stultifying effect on her sense of self"[26]
This was written in response to Swedish feminist Ellen Key and Leo Tolstoy in her Taiyō magazine column, "One Woman's Notebook," in January 1915. Her main assertion is that women could accept roles as mothers, but exemplified more than that role: as friends, as wives, as Japanese citizens, and as members of the world.[27][28]
Yosano believed that motherhood is something that shouldn’t be controlled by the government, as even in a feminist light, there is no real difference between living for a man. She believed that marriage and life should be done cooperatively and that living with one gender over the other would have “tragic consequences” for all involved.[11]
Turn to the right
During the Taishō period, Yosano turned her attention to social commentary, with Hito oyobi Onna to shite (As a Human and as a Woman), Gekido no Naka o Iku (Going through Turbulent Times), and her autobiography Akarumi e (To the Light). In 1931, Yosano, Japan's most famous pacifist succumbed to the "war fever" that gripped Japan when the Kwantung Army seized Manchuria.[18] In a poem from 1932, "Rosy-Cheeked Death" concerning the First Battle of Shanghai, Yosano supported her country against China, though she also portrayed the Chinese soldiers killed in the battle as victims, albeit only of Chiang Kai-shek, who she accused of betraying the legacy of Dr. Sun Yet-sen, who always preached Sino-Japanese friendship.[29] In "Rosy-Cheeked Death", the Chinese are "foolish" to resist Japan because Japan is a "good neighbor" whom they could never hope to defeat, making their resistance futile.[30]
In her poem "Citizens of Japan, A Morning Song" published in June 1932, Yosano embraced Bushido as she praised a Japanese soldier for dying for the Emperor at the First Battle of Shanghai as she described how the soldier "scatters" his body when he is blown apart as a "human bomb".[18] Yosano called the "scattered" body of the soldier "purer than a flower, giving life to a samurai's honor".[18] Unlike the Kimi, Yosano called for Japanese women to "unify in loyalty" for the "cause of the Emperor's forces". The American scholar Steven Robson noted that unlike the Kimi, which like the rest of Yosano's early poetry was extremely innovative, Citizens of Japan is cliche-ridden as Yosano used well-known phrases like "a samurai's honor" taken straight from the ultra-nationalist press without developing a vocabulary of her own.[31] Yosano ended her poem by praising Bushido, declaring that the "purest" act a Japanese man could perform was to die for the Emperor in battle and urged the Kwantung Army forward onward in the conquest of Manchuria "through suffering a hundredfold" to "smash the sissified dreams of compromise".[32]
Yosano's poems from 1937 onward support the war against China, and in 1941, she supported war against the United States and the United Kingdom.[10] Her late commentaries in the early Showa years tended to praise militarism, and also promoted her feminist viewpoints. Her final work, Shin Man'yōshū (New Man'yōshū, 1937–39) was a compilation of 26,783 poems by 6,675 contributors, written over a 60-year period.
In 1942, in one of her last poems, Yosano praised her son who was serving as a lieutenant in the Imperial Navy, urging him to "fight bravely" for the Emperor in "this sacred war".[33] Yosano died of a stroke in 1942 at the age of 63.[34] Her death, occurring in the middle of the Pacific War, went almost unnoticed in the press, and after the end of the war, her works were largely forgotten by critics and the public. In the 1950s, the Kimi was made mandatory reading in Japanese high schools, and during the protests led by idealistic university students against the government of Nobusuke Kishi, whose intention was to do away with Article 9 of the constitution, the Kimi became something of an anthem for the students.[35] Her romantic, sensual style has come back into popularity in recent years, and she has an ever-increasing following. Her grave is at Tama Cemetery in Fuchu, Tokyo.
Ethnicity
Other Ethnicities/Cultures
Age
63
Family
Children
Gender
Female
Eyes
Dark Brown Eyes
Hair
Hair black with streaks of white, full and high, at the shoulder
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Fair SKinned
Height
5' 4"
Belief/Deity
Awakened One
Aligned Organization
Other Affiliations
Ruled Locations
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