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Miyake Kaho (1868-1943)
Aug. 16th, 2024 08:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnozomiMiyake Kaho was born in 1868 in Tokyo, originally named Tanabe Tatsu; her father was a teacher and language scholar who became a diplomat in the new Meiji administration. They were well-to-do and lived in Western style. Tatsu attended the newly established Atomi School for Girls, under its founder, Atomi Kakei, whom she admired.
When she was thirteen, however, her father’s libertine extravagance brought the family down in the world; they moved to a much smaller house and she left school to study alone at home. There she learned the Chinese and Japanese classics, traditional musical instruments, painting, and waka poetry. For the latter, she was sent to Nakajima Utako’s Haginoya school of poetry, where she studied alongside Higuchi Ichiyo.
In order to have Tatsu learn English, her mother also sent her to the Sakurai Girls’ School, where she studied with Yajima Kajiko (and was summarily pulled out by her offended mother when asked to bring Christmas presents to school), and later to the Meiji Girls’ School under Iwamoto Yoshiharu. She left the Meiji school likewise after a short time, upon the untimely death of her older brother Jiroichi, and in 1886 enrolled in the Tokyo Normal School for Women (later Ochanomizu University), where she spent three years, mastering English and gleefully attending school dances.
Tatsu had always been fond of writing, especially poetry. In 1887, sick in bed at home, she was given a copy of a novel by Tsubouchi Shoyo and found its natural rendition of student life very striking. “…I could do that,” she thought, and started writing her own. She was also motivated by the desire to earn money for a memorial service for her brother (although this may be a later justification on her part). The novel she wrote, Yabu no uguisu [Warbler in the Grove], was published (with some help from Tsubouchi and various family friends) to a positive reception, under the pen name of Kaho. The story of various young women facing marriage and schooling and the ensemble cast surrounding them, it brings in the same questions of Westernization and education for women that had marked Kaho’s life so far.
In 1892, Kaho married the journalist Miyake Setsurei. While her writing pace slowed after marrying and bearing five children (most of whom became or married eminent personages later on), she continued to produce numerous short stories and essays, mostly in the same vein of character sketches and examinations of the era as her debut work. She died in 1932.
Sources
Copland
When she was thirteen, however, her father’s libertine extravagance brought the family down in the world; they moved to a much smaller house and she left school to study alone at home. There she learned the Chinese and Japanese classics, traditional musical instruments, painting, and waka poetry. For the latter, she was sent to Nakajima Utako’s Haginoya school of poetry, where she studied alongside Higuchi Ichiyo.
In order to have Tatsu learn English, her mother also sent her to the Sakurai Girls’ School, where she studied with Yajima Kajiko (and was summarily pulled out by her offended mother when asked to bring Christmas presents to school), and later to the Meiji Girls’ School under Iwamoto Yoshiharu. She left the Meiji school likewise after a short time, upon the untimely death of her older brother Jiroichi, and in 1886 enrolled in the Tokyo Normal School for Women (later Ochanomizu University), where she spent three years, mastering English and gleefully attending school dances.
Tatsu had always been fond of writing, especially poetry. In 1887, sick in bed at home, she was given a copy of a novel by Tsubouchi Shoyo and found its natural rendition of student life very striking. “…I could do that,” she thought, and started writing her own. She was also motivated by the desire to earn money for a memorial service for her brother (although this may be a later justification on her part). The novel she wrote, Yabu no uguisu [Warbler in the Grove], was published (with some help from Tsubouchi and various family friends) to a positive reception, under the pen name of Kaho. The story of various young women facing marriage and schooling and the ensemble cast surrounding them, it brings in the same questions of Westernization and education for women that had marked Kaho’s life so far.
In 1892, Kaho married the journalist Miyake Setsurei. While her writing pace slowed after marrying and bearing five children (most of whom became or married eminent personages later on), she continued to produce numerous short stories and essays, mostly in the same vein of character sketches and examinations of the era as her debut work. She died in 1932.
Sources
Copland
