Sasaki Nobuko (1878-1949)
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senzenwomenSasaki Nobuko was born in 1878 in Tokyo, where her father ran a hospital and her mother, Sasaki Toyoju, was the head of the Japan Women’s Christian Temperance Union (founded jointly with Yajima Kajiko), working actively for monogamy and against prostitution and alcoholism; Toyoju was also aunt to Soma Kokko. Nobuko spent her youth studying at mission schools; her mother hoped to have her study in the United States and become a journalist.
In 1895, when Nobuko was eighteen, the Sasakis held a party for writers who had reported on the First Sino-Japanese War, among them the 25-year-old journalist Kunikida Doppo. Immediately struck by Nobuko’s straightforward intelligence and beauty, he began to court her with English poetry of his own as well as recitations of Wordworth. Nobuko was charmed enough to agree to his proposal of marriage, but her mother was fiercely opposed, and eventually gave in only on the condition that they married quietly and lived outside Tokyo. However, the marriage did not go well: Doppo, trying to make a living from his writing, was desperately poor, barely able to put rice on the table. He was also short-tempered and high-handed. Nobuko fled back to her parents less than six months later, where she shortly gave birth to a daughter called Urako, who was added to the family register in the guise of her younger sister.
Both her parents died not long after. In 1901, relatives sent her to America to marry a politician’s son called Mori Hiroshi; they did not expect, however, that on the long boat trip she would fall in love with the chief purser, Takei Kanzaburo, and he (although married), with her. Instead of staying in the US, she got straight back on the boat to return to Japan with Takei.
This “scandalous” behavior was leaked to the newspapers by a fellow passenger, the educationalist Hatoyama Haruko, which left Nobuko exposed to fierce criticism and slander as a “loose woman” “unbefitting to her class” and so on. The writer Arishima Takeo (a close friend of Nobuko’s unsuccessful fiancé Mori) picked up her story and made a novel out of it, Aru Onna [A Certain Woman] (in which the Nobuko figure dies in the end). Nobuko’s little sister Yoshie, furious, demanded to meet with Arishima and defend her sister’s honor, but Arishima committed suicide along with his lover Hatano Akiko before she could make this happen.
Once the furor had died down, Nobuko and Takei (until his death in 1921) ran an inn in the southern city of Sasebo, raising their daughter Ruriko. One of their guests, Okabe Kansuke, eventually married Sasaki Yoshie and took her to his hometown of Maoka in Tochigi. In 1925, when Yoshie became ill after childbirth, Nobuko took Ruriko and moved to Maoka to help look after her. There, as well as looking after her sister’s family, she ran a Sunday school which made her very popular among the local children, continuing it throughout World War II even when Christianity was not well regarded. She died in 1949 at the age of seventy-one.
Sources
Nakae
https://kusanomido.com/study/history/japan/shouwa/101171/ (Japanese) Biographical article with photographs of some of the relevant people
In 1895, when Nobuko was eighteen, the Sasakis held a party for writers who had reported on the First Sino-Japanese War, among them the 25-year-old journalist Kunikida Doppo. Immediately struck by Nobuko’s straightforward intelligence and beauty, he began to court her with English poetry of his own as well as recitations of Wordworth. Nobuko was charmed enough to agree to his proposal of marriage, but her mother was fiercely opposed, and eventually gave in only on the condition that they married quietly and lived outside Tokyo. However, the marriage did not go well: Doppo, trying to make a living from his writing, was desperately poor, barely able to put rice on the table. He was also short-tempered and high-handed. Nobuko fled back to her parents less than six months later, where she shortly gave birth to a daughter called Urako, who was added to the family register in the guise of her younger sister.
Both her parents died not long after. In 1901, relatives sent her to America to marry a politician’s son called Mori Hiroshi; they did not expect, however, that on the long boat trip she would fall in love with the chief purser, Takei Kanzaburo, and he (although married), with her. Instead of staying in the US, she got straight back on the boat to return to Japan with Takei.
This “scandalous” behavior was leaked to the newspapers by a fellow passenger, the educationalist Hatoyama Haruko, which left Nobuko exposed to fierce criticism and slander as a “loose woman” “unbefitting to her class” and so on. The writer Arishima Takeo (a close friend of Nobuko’s unsuccessful fiancé Mori) picked up her story and made a novel out of it, Aru Onna [A Certain Woman] (in which the Nobuko figure dies in the end). Nobuko’s little sister Yoshie, furious, demanded to meet with Arishima and defend her sister’s honor, but Arishima committed suicide along with his lover Hatano Akiko before she could make this happen.
Once the furor had died down, Nobuko and Takei (until his death in 1921) ran an inn in the southern city of Sasebo, raising their daughter Ruriko. One of their guests, Okabe Kansuke, eventually married Sasaki Yoshie and took her to his hometown of Maoka in Tochigi. In 1925, when Yoshie became ill after childbirth, Nobuko took Ruriko and moved to Maoka to help look after her. There, as well as looking after her sister’s family, she ran a Sunday school which made her very popular among the local children, continuing it throughout World War II even when Christianity was not well regarded. She died in 1949 at the age of seventy-one.
Sources
Nakae
https://kusanomido.com/study/history/japan/shouwa/101171/ (Japanese) Biographical article with photographs of some of the relevant people
no subject
Date: 2025-04-11 07:07 pm (UTC)I read the Wikipedia synopsis of the novel: yikes. Harsh!
no subject
Date: 2025-04-14 11:29 am (UTC)Same. And yeah, while autobiographical and biographical novels were a particularly big thing at the time, I wish Arishima had stuck to fictionalizing his own life...