Shimizu Shikin (1868-1933)
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senzenwomenShimizu Shikin was born in 1868 in present-day Okayama, originally named Toyoko; her father was a classicist and scientist who opened a factory in Kyoto when she was four years old, unluckily condemning the family to poverty when the factory burned to the ground. Little is known about Toyoko’s childhood otherwise, but she left school at fourteen, spent a few years reading new publications by Meiji intellectuals as well as her father’s library of Western classics in translation, and married a lawyer called Okazaki at eighteen, only to divorce him a few years later. She was already interested in writing and women’s rights, possibly through school and through her husband’s connections with the Freedom and Popular Rights Movement, in which both she and he appeared as lecturers.
In 1890, shortly after her divorce, she moved to Tokyo and became a reporter, one of Japan’s first women journalists, for the magazine Jogaku Zasshi [Journal of Women’s Learning]. Founded five years earlier by Iwamoto Yoshiharu (Wakamatsu Shizuko’s husband), the magazine had close ties to Meiji Girls’ School, where Toyoko also attended lectures in her spare time and eventually became a teacher of writing while serving as editor and lead author for the magazine. Her first work of fiction was published in the magazine in 1891, a short story based on her experience of early marriage and divorce, followed by numerous other stories and essays on women’s rights as well as interviews with prominent figures such as Atomi Kakei, founder of the girls’ school bearing her name, and the pioneering doctor Ogino Ginko. She also published a survey of women writers including Koganei Kimiko, Kimura Akebono, and Wakamatsu Shizuko.
Gossip suggested that Toyoko was involved at some point with the left-wing politicians Ueki Emori (to whose book on women’s rights she contributed a preface) and Oi Kentaro, bearing a child (adopted by her older brother) to the latter (as an unknowing rival to Oi’s then girlfriend, Fukuda Hideko, who until then had been a close friend); in 1892, however, she married a professor of agriculture called Kozai Yoshinao whom she had met through her brother. Although he was undisturbed by her troubled past and showed every sign of respecting her as a human being, Kozai was unmotivated to urge her to keep on with her work. Their first child (of six) was born the year after their marriage, and thereafter Toyoko largely stopped writing, except for a five-year period when her husband was studying in Germany and the US (this was the first time she used the penname Kozai Shikin or Shimizu Shikin, under which she has gone down in history). Her stories addressed issues of women’s rights and women’s lives, as well as touching on other social questions such as poverty and the burakumin “untouchable” caste. She died in 1933 at the age of sixty-seven.
Sources
Nakae
Mori 1996
Copeland
In 1890, shortly after her divorce, she moved to Tokyo and became a reporter, one of Japan’s first women journalists, for the magazine Jogaku Zasshi [Journal of Women’s Learning]. Founded five years earlier by Iwamoto Yoshiharu (Wakamatsu Shizuko’s husband), the magazine had close ties to Meiji Girls’ School, where Toyoko also attended lectures in her spare time and eventually became a teacher of writing while serving as editor and lead author for the magazine. Her first work of fiction was published in the magazine in 1891, a short story based on her experience of early marriage and divorce, followed by numerous other stories and essays on women’s rights as well as interviews with prominent figures such as Atomi Kakei, founder of the girls’ school bearing her name, and the pioneering doctor Ogino Ginko. She also published a survey of women writers including Koganei Kimiko, Kimura Akebono, and Wakamatsu Shizuko.
Gossip suggested that Toyoko was involved at some point with the left-wing politicians Ueki Emori (to whose book on women’s rights she contributed a preface) and Oi Kentaro, bearing a child (adopted by her older brother) to the latter (as an unknowing rival to Oi’s then girlfriend, Fukuda Hideko, who until then had been a close friend); in 1892, however, she married a professor of agriculture called Kozai Yoshinao whom she had met through her brother. Although he was undisturbed by her troubled past and showed every sign of respecting her as a human being, Kozai was unmotivated to urge her to keep on with her work. Their first child (of six) was born the year after their marriage, and thereafter Toyoko largely stopped writing, except for a five-year period when her husband was studying in Germany and the US (this was the first time she used the penname Kozai Shikin or Shimizu Shikin, under which she has gone down in history). Her stories addressed issues of women’s rights and women’s lives, as well as touching on other social questions such as poverty and the burakumin “untouchable” caste. She died in 1933 at the age of sixty-seven.
Sources
Nakae
Mori 1996
Copeland
