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与謝野晶子（よさの あきこ、1878-1942）は、堺の老舗和菓子屋に生まれ、歌集『みだれ髪』で女性の情熱を臆せず歌い上げた明治・大正・昭和の歌人。反戦詩「君死にたまふことなかれ」や女性解放運動への関与、男女共学校「文化学院」の創設でも知られる。
Yosano Akiko (born Hō Shō) was born on December 7, 1878, in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, the third daughter of Hō Sōshichi, owner of the long-established Japanese confectionery shop “Surugaya,” and his wife Tsune. As a child she helped out at the family shop while also immersing herself in classical literature such as “The Tale of Genji” and classical waka poetry, building a deep self-taught knowledge of the classics. In 1900, she met the poet Yosano Tekkan (given name Hiroshi), who edited the magazine “Myōjō,” and he recognized the talent in her tanka, setting her on the path to becoming a poet.
After an intense romance with Tekkan, she moved to Tokyo in 1901, and that August she published her debut poetry collection “Midaregami” (Tangled Hair) — still under her maiden name, Hō Akiko — in which a woman sang of her own passion and body without hesitation for the first time. Later that same year she married Tekkan and changed her surname from Hō to Yosano; the collection shocked the literary establishment of the day and established her as a leading poet of Japanese Romanticism. In 1904, she published the long poem “Kimi Shini Tamou Koto Nakare” (You Must Not Die) in “Myōjō,” addressed to her younger brother Chūzaburō (who later took over the family business under the name Sōshichi), who was serving at the Siege of Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War. The poem challenged the prevailing glorification of dying for the nation and ignited fierce controversy.
In 1911, she contributed the opening poem “Sozorogoto” to the first issue of “Seitō” (Bluestocking), the pioneering literary magazine written entirely by women, founded by Hiratsuka Raichō and others; its line “The day the mountains move will come” became an emblematic phrase marking the dawn of Japan’s women’s liberation movement. In 1921, together with the architect Nishimura Isaku, the painter Ishii Hakutei, and her husband Tekkan, she co-founded Bunka Gakuin in the Ochanomizu district of Tokyo. Its first class enrolled only girls, but the school became known as the first to achieve coeducation at the secondary level in Japan, leaving her mark as an educator as well. She raised twelve children (six sons and six daughters) while continuing a prolific writing career.
In her later years she devoted herself to translating “The Tale of Genji” into modern Japanese, completing the six-volume “Shin-shin’yaku Genji Monogatari” published between 1938 and 1939. She is said to have composed more than fifty thousand tanka over her lifetime. She died on May 29, 1942, at the age of 63. Far more than simply a poet who sang of passion with candor, she continued to challenge the conventions of her era in the fields of anti-war thought, women’s liberation, and education — a way of living that continues to influence many people today.