Kamichika Ichiko (1888-1981)
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senzenwomenKamichika Ichiko was born in 1888 in Nagasaki, where her father was a doctor of Chinese medicine; the baby of five children, she grew up in poverty after the deaths of her father and oldest brother. She finished higher elementary school in 1904 and started working as a teacher’s aide, leaving her job in only three days to go back to school herself. She was eventually able to graduate from the Tsuda Eigaku Juku girls’ school in Tokyo (housekeeping for the painter Takehisa Yumeji and proofreading for literary magazines to make ends meet meanwhile). Tsuda Umeko herself reminded Ichiko that she wouldn’t learn to speak English from books alone, and had her move in with one of the American English teachers, which did wonders for Ichiko’s English-speaking abilities.
While still a student she became involved with Hiratsuka Raicho’s Bluestockings, publishing translations in the magazine; although employed as a teacher at a girls’ school up north in Hirosaki, she lost her job when her association with the Bluestockings was discovered. Returning to Tokyo, she worked with Otake Kokichi and others to found a new women's literary journal called Saffron.
In 1914 Ichiko became a reporter for a Tokyo newspaper (her English skills meant that she was assigned to foreign policy issues, rather than the usual women’s beat), which led to her involvement with the leading socialists of the time. She began a relationship with the anarchist Osugi Sakae (who seems, for good or ill, to have been one of those men who just has something going on regardless of all the good reasons not to get involved with him). “Oh, was that you?” he said at their first meeting. “The Eigaku Juku girl nibbling a roast sweet potato with her head buried in Modern Thought—" Osugi, a believer in free love who was already married to the long-suffering Hori Yasuko, did not keep secrets from Ichiko when he also became involved with the younger writer Ito Noe. “Independence, living separately, freedom!” he said. “If you’re not comfortable with it, it’s because your ideology is still immature.” Ichiko held out until 1916, when she tracked Osugi and Noe down at the Hikagejaya Inn and stabbed him, in what became the famous Hikagejaya Incident. She was sentenced to two years in prison for attempted murder (Osugi survived, to be murdered along with Noe by state terrorism in 1923).
After her release in 1919, she married (a man called Suzuki Atsushi about whom not much seems to be known), had three children, and concentrated on writing, founding a women’s literary magazine with Suzuki and taking part in Hasegawa Shigure’s Nyonin Geijutsu and the left-wing Tane maku hito. She and Suzuki divorced in 1936.
After the war, Ichiko worked in various organizations for women’s rights and democracy. In 1953 she was elected to the National Diet as a Socialist Party representative, remaining in office on and off until 1969 and helping to pass the 1957 Anti-Prostitution Act while there [from Tanaka among my sources, whose book was published in early 1957: “even the most fond among us could hardly believe that the human-flesh capitalism continuing since the Tokugawa period will give way without a fight, and at this important moment in time it is encouraging to have Kamichika Ichiko holding down her seat as a lone woman in the Diet”].
In 1970 she sued to prevent the showing of a movie about the Hikagejaya Incident, and lost on the grounds that the events were “common knowledge." In the same year, she received the national Order of the Sacred Treasure Second Class. She died in 1981 at the age of ninety-three.
Sources
Tanaka
Mori 1996
https://ameblo.jp/yama-chan1/entry-12764066012.html (Japanese) Contains a character map from a drama about the Hikagejaya Incident, showing just how complicated it was, as well as photos of Ichiko at various ages
While still a student she became involved with Hiratsuka Raicho’s Bluestockings, publishing translations in the magazine; although employed as a teacher at a girls’ school up north in Hirosaki, she lost her job when her association with the Bluestockings was discovered. Returning to Tokyo, she worked with Otake Kokichi and others to found a new women's literary journal called Saffron.
In 1914 Ichiko became a reporter for a Tokyo newspaper (her English skills meant that she was assigned to foreign policy issues, rather than the usual women’s beat), which led to her involvement with the leading socialists of the time. She began a relationship with the anarchist Osugi Sakae (who seems, for good or ill, to have been one of those men who just has something going on regardless of all the good reasons not to get involved with him). “Oh, was that you?” he said at their first meeting. “The Eigaku Juku girl nibbling a roast sweet potato with her head buried in Modern Thought—" Osugi, a believer in free love who was already married to the long-suffering Hori Yasuko, did not keep secrets from Ichiko when he also became involved with the younger writer Ito Noe. “Independence, living separately, freedom!” he said. “If you’re not comfortable with it, it’s because your ideology is still immature.” Ichiko held out until 1916, when she tracked Osugi and Noe down at the Hikagejaya Inn and stabbed him, in what became the famous Hikagejaya Incident. She was sentenced to two years in prison for attempted murder (Osugi survived, to be murdered along with Noe by state terrorism in 1923).
After her release in 1919, she married (a man called Suzuki Atsushi about whom not much seems to be known), had three children, and concentrated on writing, founding a women’s literary magazine with Suzuki and taking part in Hasegawa Shigure’s Nyonin Geijutsu and the left-wing Tane maku hito. She and Suzuki divorced in 1936.
After the war, Ichiko worked in various organizations for women’s rights and democracy. In 1953 she was elected to the National Diet as a Socialist Party representative, remaining in office on and off until 1969 and helping to pass the 1957 Anti-Prostitution Act while there [from Tanaka among my sources, whose book was published in early 1957: “even the most fond among us could hardly believe that the human-flesh capitalism continuing since the Tokugawa period will give way without a fight, and at this important moment in time it is encouraging to have Kamichika Ichiko holding down her seat as a lone woman in the Diet”].
In 1970 she sued to prevent the showing of a movie about the Hikagejaya Incident, and lost on the grounds that the events were “common knowledge." In the same year, she received the national Order of the Sacred Treasure Second Class. She died in 1981 at the age of ninety-three.
Sources
Tanaka
Mori 1996
https://ameblo.jp/yama-chan1/entry-12764066012.html (Japanese) Contains a character map from a drama about the Hikagejaya Incident, showing just how complicated it was, as well as photos of Ichiko at various ages
