Ikuta Hanayo (1888-1970)
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senzenwomenIkuta Hanayo was born in 1888 in Tokushima, where her father was the village mayor and eked out a living from growing tangerines; her maiden name was Nishizaki. She was one of the first to attend the Tokushima Girls’ School, where she read her way through the library. After graduation she worked as an elementary school teacher’s aide and published poems and short stories in the Women’s Literary Magazine; in 1910, after her father’s death, the magazine’s editor helped find her a place in Tokyo, where she worked odd jobs of all kinds and joined the staff of Hiratsuka Raicho’s Bluestocking magazine in 1913.
The following year, a young writer called Ikuta Shungetsu was inspired by Hanayo’s article on love and struggle to get in touch and propose to her. Hanayo was both attracted and concerned by his youth and good looks: she was four years older, and considered herself unattractive and three inches too short (she was 145 cm as an adult). He talked her into it, however, and two weeks after their first meeting they moved into a tenement apartment together and set up two desks in separate rooms. Shungetsu became a published poet and translator; Hanayo looked after him while earning their living as a journalist and continuing to write essays on women’s rights. Based on her own experiences, she wrote that as long as women were denied financial assets and career opportunities, they would have no option but to sell their chastity to eat; this kicked off the “chastity debates” with the writer Yasuda Satsuki, also a Bluestockinger, who argued that a woman would be better off dead than unchaste. Meanwhile Hanayo served as Bluestocking’s editor for some time and also worked with Hasegawa Shigure on the founding of Nyonin Geijutsu {Women’s Arts}.
In 1921 Shungetsu thanked his wife in a published essay: “We are such opposites that I sometimes wonder how we can manage to live together. You are much simpler and more straightforward than I am, free of contradictions, and above all thoroughly good.” However, he went on to have an affair with the poet Eguchi Ayako, a long-time friend of Hanayo’s; she did not hesitate to describe her feelings of betrayal in print. In 1930, Shungetsu killed himself by jumping into the sea. After his death, Hanayo—who had been his amanuensis and his support for sixteen years—became embroiled in a prolonged legal battle with his family for his copyrights, because they had never been legally married; eventually she and his youngest brother produced a jointly edited edition of Shungetsu’s complete works.
During the war, Hanayo continued to work on Nyonin Geijutsu’s successor, Kagayaku, for which she visited Japanese soldiers in wartime China; she contributed to various literary magazines and associations aimed at supporting the national polity. She was injured in 1945 during the firebombing of Tokyo.
In 1946, upon the first postwar General Election, posters used a text written by Hanayo to urge women to vote (“We build the new Japan with the life force of the Japanese people, not just men’s life force, women’s too”). She spent her later years giving well-attended lectures on the Tale of Genji, aimed at women and later published in book form, before her death in 1970 at the age of eighty-two.
Sources
Mori 2008
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanayo_Ikuta#/media/File:1946posterJapan.jpg (Japanese) Election poster with Hanayo’s text
https://www.econ.shiga-u.ac.jp/ebr/Ronso-422kikuchi.pdf (English) Interesting article which touches on Hanayo’s work as a wartime poet in China
The following year, a young writer called Ikuta Shungetsu was inspired by Hanayo’s article on love and struggle to get in touch and propose to her. Hanayo was both attracted and concerned by his youth and good looks: she was four years older, and considered herself unattractive and three inches too short (she was 145 cm as an adult). He talked her into it, however, and two weeks after their first meeting they moved into a tenement apartment together and set up two desks in separate rooms. Shungetsu became a published poet and translator; Hanayo looked after him while earning their living as a journalist and continuing to write essays on women’s rights. Based on her own experiences, she wrote that as long as women were denied financial assets and career opportunities, they would have no option but to sell their chastity to eat; this kicked off the “chastity debates” with the writer Yasuda Satsuki, also a Bluestockinger, who argued that a woman would be better off dead than unchaste. Meanwhile Hanayo served as Bluestocking’s editor for some time and also worked with Hasegawa Shigure on the founding of Nyonin Geijutsu {Women’s Arts}.
In 1921 Shungetsu thanked his wife in a published essay: “We are such opposites that I sometimes wonder how we can manage to live together. You are much simpler and more straightforward than I am, free of contradictions, and above all thoroughly good.” However, he went on to have an affair with the poet Eguchi Ayako, a long-time friend of Hanayo’s; she did not hesitate to describe her feelings of betrayal in print. In 1930, Shungetsu killed himself by jumping into the sea. After his death, Hanayo—who had been his amanuensis and his support for sixteen years—became embroiled in a prolonged legal battle with his family for his copyrights, because they had never been legally married; eventually she and his youngest brother produced a jointly edited edition of Shungetsu’s complete works.
During the war, Hanayo continued to work on Nyonin Geijutsu’s successor, Kagayaku, for which she visited Japanese soldiers in wartime China; she contributed to various literary magazines and associations aimed at supporting the national polity. She was injured in 1945 during the firebombing of Tokyo.
In 1946, upon the first postwar General Election, posters used a text written by Hanayo to urge women to vote (“We build the new Japan with the life force of the Japanese people, not just men’s life force, women’s too”). She spent her later years giving well-attended lectures on the Tale of Genji, aimed at women and later published in book form, before her death in 1970 at the age of eighty-two.
Sources
Mori 2008
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanayo_Ikuta#/media/File:1946posterJapan.jpg (Japanese) Election poster with Hanayo’s text
https://www.econ.shiga-u.ac.jp/ebr/Ronso-422kikuchi.pdf (English) Interesting article which touches on Hanayo’s work as a wartime poet in China
