Passionate Poetess who Boldly Expressed Her Love

YOSANO Akiko

About a hundred years ago there was a poetess called YOSANO Akiko (1878~1942). She boldly expressed her feelings to the man she loved through her poems, as shown below.

"Yawahadano, atsuki chishioni, furemomide, sabishikarazuya, michiwotoku kimi"
[Meaning] "Don't you feel you are preaching in vain about how life should be, without holding my hot and feminine body?"

"Haru mijikashi, nanno fumetsuno, inochizoto, chikaraaru chiwo, teni sagurasenu"
[Meaning] "Spring is short, what is life for? I let him touch my aroused breasts."

Akiko was bold at a time when women were forced to be subordinate to men, and humbleness was a feminine virtue. As you can imagine her poems created a sensation. Her poems were created in the style of "tanka" (also called "waka"). Japanese poems come in two traditional styles: one is haiku, which is created from 5, 7 and 5 syllables respectively, and the other is tanka which has 5, 7, 5, 7 and 7 syllables respectively.

Akiko was born a daughter of an old established Japanese confectionary shop owner in Sakai, Osaka in 1878. She had taken an interest in literature since attending a women's school and was talented in creating tanka. She joined a tanka magazine called "Myoujou," published from 1900 by YOSANO Tekkan (1873~1935) who later became her husband. Her life changed when she met Tekkan on a visit to Osaka in 1901.

Although he already had a wife Akiko lost her heart to Tekkan, and she was not alone. YAMAKAWA Tomiko, another talented poetess and one of Tekkan's disciples, also fell in love with him. Against this bizarre backdrop Akiko and Tomiko, both star poetesses of Myoujou, were competing to create the best love poems for Tekkan. They may have been rivals, but both were united against Tekkan's wife. So despite their battle for Tekkan's heart, it is said they enjoyed the solidarity of sisters.

In her collection of tanka titled "Midare-gami" (Dishevelled hair), published in 1901, Akiko boldly expressed her boundless love and youthful feelings for Tekkan. Her poems were highly popular among the younger generation at the time. While Tomiko was forced by her parents to marry another man, Tekkan divorced his wife, and Akiko finally achieved her dream and married Tekkan. The couple had 11 children, and it is believed that her love for Tekkan remained strong throughout her entire life.

Risky anti-war poem
In 1904, she published a poem titled "You should not die," in which she expressed her feelings for her brother who fought in the Japan-Russia war. The poem created a serious stir. For an anti-war poem from a women's standpoint to be printed at a time when the war was on everyone's minds. It was a very risky protest.

"You should not die,"
Oh, my brother, I cry for you
You should not die
As you were the youngest child
Parents love you more
Did they teach you to hold a sword and kill people?
For killing people and making you die have they raised you till 24 years old?

But Akiko's activities went beyond tanka. She played an active role in women's rights and also in a wide variety of other fields. Later in her life she translated such classics as the oldest love story "the Genji Monogatari (Tales of Genji)," into modern Japanese. Akiko was so energetic she attracts peoples' hearts even now.

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