Hanayo Ikuta

Hanayo Ikuta (14 October 1888 – 8 December 1970) (in Japanese, 生田 花世), born Nishizaki Hanayo, was a Japanese feminist writer, editor, and educator.

Hanayo Ikuta
生田 花世
A young Japanese woman wearing a print kimono, seated
Hanayo Ikuta as a young woman
Born
Nishizaki Hanayo

14 October 1888
Izumiya Village, Tokushima Prefecture
Died8 December 1970 (age 82)
Other namesKikuko Chosokabe (pseudonym)
Occupation(s)Writer, editor, educator, feminist

Early life

Hanayo Nishizaki was born in Izumiya Village, Itano District, Tokushima Prefecture,[1] the daughter of Yasutaro Nishizaki. She was a student at the Tokushima Prefectural Girls' High School, and trained to be a teacher.

Career
A poster with a block of Japanese text, outlines of two doves, and a drawing of a woman with her arm raised
A 1946 government poster urging women to vote, featuring a quote by Hanayo Ikuta

Ikuta wrote for magazines beginning in her teens, and was a elementary school teacher as a young woman. She moved to Tokyo in 1910, after her father died. Ikuta edited and wrote for literary magazines and women's periodicals, including Seitō (Bluestocking), Beatrice, Nyonin Geijutsu,[2] and Women and Labor.[3][4][5] She wrote cultural reviews, including a 1914 review of a Japanese performance of George Bernard Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession,[6] and first-person essays on womanhood, including essays on the "chastity debates".[7] Her 1914 article, "On Hunger and Chastity", asked, "Is it possible for a female clerk to earn a livelihood and yet also not worry about being able to perfectly protect her precious chastity?" She concludes that the family, social, and economic structures of early 20th-century Japan forced some women to choose between life and respectability, by excluding women with no other support from property ownership and professions.[6][8]

Ikuta published a book of poetry in 1917, and a novel in the early 1920s. In the 1930s she visited Japanese troops in Taiwan,[9] and wrote about Manchurian cuisine. During World War II she was a government worker, before she was burned in an air raid. After the war, she led literary discussions for women, and published a popular edition of The Tale of Genji.[10] A quote by Ikuta was used on a poster for the 1946 general election, encouraging women to vote.[11][12]

Personal life

She married writer Ikuta Shungetsu and used his family name.[6] Her husband died by suicide in 1930. She died in 1970, at the age of 82.[7]

References
  1. Coutts, Angela (1 September 2013). "How do we write a revolution? Debating the masses and the vanguard in the literary reviews of Nyonin geijutsu". Japan Forum. 25 (3): 362–378. doi:10.1080/09555803.2013.804106. ISSN 0955-5803. S2CID 144825496.
  2. Coutts, Angela (1 January 2012). "Imagining Radical Women in Interwar Japan: Leftist and Feminist Perspectives". Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 37 (2): 337. doi:10.1086/661713. ISSN 0097-9740. S2CID 146460664.
  3. Mulhern, Chieko Irie (1994). Japanese Women Writers: A Bio-critical Sourcebook. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 139. ISBN 978-0-313-25486-4.
  4. Ericson, Joan E. (1 September 1997). Be a Woman: Hayashi Fumiko and Modern Japanese Women's Literature. University of Hawaii Press. pp. 41–42, 44. ISBN 978-0-8248-1884-5.
  5. Loftus, Ronald P. (30 June 2004). Telling Lives: Women's Self-Writing in Modern Japan. University of Hawaii Press. p. 64. ISBN 978-0-8248-6456-9.
  6. Mackie, Vera (26 February 2003). Feminism in Modern Japan: Citizenship, Embodiment and Sexuality. Cambridge University Press. pp. 49–50, 67 note 16. ISBN 978-0-521-52719-4.
  7. Suzuki, Michiko (2010). Becoming Modern Women: Love and Female Identity in Prewar Japanese Literature and Culture. Stanford University Press. p. 52. ISBN 978-0-8047-6197-0.
  8. Kano, Ayako (2016). Japanese Feminist Debates: A Century of Contention on Sex, Love, and Labor. University of Hawai'i Press. pp. 35–37. ISBN 978-0-8248-7381-3. JSTOR j.ctvvn1vp.
  9. Buchheim, Eveline; Futselaar, Ralf (2014). Under Fire: Women and World War II: Yearbook of Women's History/Jaarboek voor Vrouwengeschiedenis 34. Uitgeverij Verloren. p. 39. ISBN 978-90-8704-475-6.
  10. Tokushima Literature Gallery, Tokushima Prefectural Museum of Literature and Calligraphy.
  11. "Poster from the First Postwar General Election". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved 3 November 2022.
  12. "5-5 General Elections". Modern Japan in archives, National Diet Library. Retrieved 3 November 2022.
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