Hara Asao (1888-1969)
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senzenwomenHara Asao was born in 1888 in Miyagi. Her family was well-to-do, and although her father (a Westernized, Christian salt merchant with high-collar tastes) died when she was twelve, he directed her mother to spend all the family’s assets on Asao’s needs, and she was able to go on to high school. Illness forced her to drop out after two years, and she spent her recovery reading all the classics, Japanese and foreign, that she could get her hands on.
In 1904 she and her mother moved to Tokyo, where she entered the Japan Women’s School of Art. There she studied poetry as well as becoming close to her English literature teacher, Ohara Yoitsu. When the married Ohara got her pregnant, possibly through rape, she switched schools due to the scandal. Asao refused to listen to his demands that she abort the child; their son Chiaki was born in 1907 and they were perfunctorily married the following year, but the marriage dissolved very quickly and Asao threw herself into writing poetry while teaching at a girls’ school near her hometown. In 1909 her poems caught the eye of Yosano Akiko, and from there on she was published in various leading literary journals of the time, including Subaru and Hiratsuka Raicho’s Bluestocking. Her first volume of poetry, Tearstains, appeared in 1913.
She married the aspiring painter Shoji Isami (an old classmate’s brother who had helped her start school in Tokyo) in 1914 and divorced him in 1919, when the stress of his playboy tendencies and disregard for her and her children had begun to affect her health; in the interim their son Yasumi had been born in 1915, and her second volume of poetry published in 1916.
In 1920 she moved to Sendai in her home region and met the poet Ishiwara Jun, who was also a physics professor at Tohoku University who had introduced the theory of relativity to Japan. Ishiwara, who had a wife and five children, fell hard for the beautiful Asao; she fled to Tokyo to stay with her close friend Mikajima Yoshiko, pleading with Ishiwara’s wife “Don’t let him come after me!” He did, though, and she eventually gave in. Reports of their love affair in the newspapers cost Ishiwara his job; Asao and Yoshiko were both expelled from the influential Araragi poets’ group, although Ishiwara was permitted to remain a member (blame the woman). He and Asao moved together to rural Chiba where they lived quietly, Asao writing poetry—her third volume was published in 1921—and painting while Ishiwara worked as a science journalist. They also started their own poetry journal in 1924, along with various non-Araragi poet friends including Kitahara Hakushu (Eguchi Ayako’s ex-husband).
By 1928 Asao’s relationship with the controlling and occasionally unfaithful Ishiwara had deteriorated, especially due to her shock at Yoshiko's sudden death and his failure to support her; although he wrote a foreword to her fourth volume of poetry, published in 1928, vowing to do better as a husband, she left him later that year. Later in life she continued to write while supporting herself as a bar madam and occasionally an actress. She returned to her hometown in her late forties, assisted by friends and her two sons, and died in 1969 at the age of eighty-two. (She spent her later years with her younger son’s family; her daughter-in-law Momoko reported that Asao enjoyed housework but was unusually bad at it, knitting exquisite but unwearable socks.) Her sons Chiaki and Yasumi became a movie director and an actor respectively, both using her maiden name of Hara (to judge by the Wikipedia photograph, they both inherited their mother’s beauty and then some). Her poems are now the subject of widespread research, and the yearly Hara Asao Award is given for poetry.
Sources
Nakae
Mori 1996
http://www.haraasao.jp/museum/index.html (Japanese) Site of a museum honoring Asao’s life. Click on any of the list of exhibitions in the left margin for various photographs and reproductions.
In 1904 she and her mother moved to Tokyo, where she entered the Japan Women’s School of Art. There she studied poetry as well as becoming close to her English literature teacher, Ohara Yoitsu. When the married Ohara got her pregnant, possibly through rape, she switched schools due to the scandal. Asao refused to listen to his demands that she abort the child; their son Chiaki was born in 1907 and they were perfunctorily married the following year, but the marriage dissolved very quickly and Asao threw herself into writing poetry while teaching at a girls’ school near her hometown. In 1909 her poems caught the eye of Yosano Akiko, and from there on she was published in various leading literary journals of the time, including Subaru and Hiratsuka Raicho’s Bluestocking. Her first volume of poetry, Tearstains, appeared in 1913.
She married the aspiring painter Shoji Isami (an old classmate’s brother who had helped her start school in Tokyo) in 1914 and divorced him in 1919, when the stress of his playboy tendencies and disregard for her and her children had begun to affect her health; in the interim their son Yasumi had been born in 1915, and her second volume of poetry published in 1916.
In 1920 she moved to Sendai in her home region and met the poet Ishiwara Jun, who was also a physics professor at Tohoku University who had introduced the theory of relativity to Japan. Ishiwara, who had a wife and five children, fell hard for the beautiful Asao; she fled to Tokyo to stay with her close friend Mikajima Yoshiko, pleading with Ishiwara’s wife “Don’t let him come after me!” He did, though, and she eventually gave in. Reports of their love affair in the newspapers cost Ishiwara his job; Asao and Yoshiko were both expelled from the influential Araragi poets’ group, although Ishiwara was permitted to remain a member (blame the woman). He and Asao moved together to rural Chiba where they lived quietly, Asao writing poetry—her third volume was published in 1921—and painting while Ishiwara worked as a science journalist. They also started their own poetry journal in 1924, along with various non-Araragi poet friends including Kitahara Hakushu (Eguchi Ayako’s ex-husband).
By 1928 Asao’s relationship with the controlling and occasionally unfaithful Ishiwara had deteriorated, especially due to her shock at Yoshiko's sudden death and his failure to support her; although he wrote a foreword to her fourth volume of poetry, published in 1928, vowing to do better as a husband, she left him later that year. Later in life she continued to write while supporting herself as a bar madam and occasionally an actress. She returned to her hometown in her late forties, assisted by friends and her two sons, and died in 1969 at the age of eighty-two. (She spent her later years with her younger son’s family; her daughter-in-law Momoko reported that Asao enjoyed housework but was unusually bad at it, knitting exquisite but unwearable socks.) Her sons Chiaki and Yasumi became a movie director and an actor respectively, both using her maiden name of Hara (to judge by the Wikipedia photograph, they both inherited their mother’s beauty and then some). Her poems are now the subject of widespread research, and the yearly Hara Asao Award is given for poetry.
Sources
Nakae
Mori 1996
http://www.haraasao.jp/museum/index.html (Japanese) Site of a museum honoring Asao’s life. Click on any of the list of exhibitions in the left margin for various photographs and reproductions.
