Miyamoto Yuriko

Yuriko Miyamoto

Miyamoto Yuriko ( Japanese 宮本 百合 子 , actually: Chūjō Yuri ( 中 條 ユ リ ); born February 13, 1899 in Koishikawa (today: Bunkyō ), Tokyo ; † January 21, 1951 ) was a Japanese writer and critic of the Shōwa period .

At the age of 17 she made her debut with Mazushiki Hitobito no Mure ( 貧 し き 人 々 の 群 , Eng . "A bevy of poor people") and was regarded as a genius, later she played an important role as an author of proletarian literature and as a leader of democratic literature .

Life

family

She was born in Tokyo in the Koishikawa district (today: Bunkyō ) as the eldest daughter of the architect Chūjō Seiichirō, famous in the Taishō period, and his wife Sumie (their registered place of residence in Koseki was Minamimachi in Kōriyama , Fukushima Prefecture ). Her father, Seiichirō, was born in Yonezawa , Yamagata Prefecture, graduated from elementary school in Fukushima and went to Tokyo; after completing an architecture degree at Tokyo University, was employed in the Ministry of Education and then became a lecturer in civil engineering at the agricultural school in Sapporo . Her grandfather, Chūjō Masatsune, was a samurai in Yonezawa , later held a post in Fukushima Prefecture and campaigned for the excavation of the Asaka Canal . Her mother, Sumie, was the eldest daughter of Nishimura Shigeki , who had played an important role as a thinker in the early Meiji period .

youth

She started writing during her school days. After she had started the preparatory course in English at Nihon Joshi University in 1916 , she published on the advice of the author Tsubouchi Shōyō in the September issue of the magazine Chūō Kōron under the name Chūjō Yuriko in the humanistic style of the Shirakaba group, the story Mazushiki Hitobito no Mure and became regarded as a genius. In this work she described her experiences with the poor farmers from her grandfather's village, who was a large landowner there. She soon dropped out of the ongoing preparatory course at Nihon Joshi University.

Marriage and divorce

Together with her father, she went on a study trip to the United States in 1918, became a student at Columbia University the following year and married Araki Shigeru, 15 years her senior, a researcher of the ancient languages ​​of Asia whom she had met there. She returned to Japan in December. But conflicts arose between the two and they divorced in 1924. While she was living with Yuasa Yoshiko , who was acquainted with Nogami Yaeki and studied Russian literature, she processed her failed married life in the novel Nobuko ( 伸 子 ), which became a first-class work of modern Japanese literature. The entire correspondence of this time with Yuasa was published in 2008 by Kanrin Shobō ( ISBN 978-4-87737-261-3 (Japanese)).

The proletarian literary movement

From December 1927, she lived with Yuasa for three years in the Soviet Union. She was friends with people like the director Sergei Eisenstein ; Likewise with the director Kinusgasa Teinosuke and later founder of Zenshinza - Kabuki group Kawarasaki Chojuro who traveled at that time the Soviet Union and Europe. After traveling to Western Europe, she returned to Japan in November 1930. The following month she joined the NARP writers' association , took part in the proletarian literary movement, and in 1931 joined the then illegal Communist Party of Japan . In addition, she was responsible for the magazine Hataraku Fujin ( 働 婦人 d, German "working woman"). The next year she married Miyamoto Kenji , nine years her junior , who was also a literary critic and a member of the Communist Party. She was arrested a little later and Kenji went underground. In 1933, Kenji was arrested and taken to court as the main culprit in the lynching incident . In the following year, the now released Yuriko was registered properly in Kenjis Koseki and so changed her name from Chūjō to Miyamoto; In 1937 she also changed her writer name to Miyamoto Yuriko.

During the war

Yuriko supported the imprisoned Kenji, but was arrested several times herself, which also affected her physical condition. Despite the arrests and writing bans, she stubbornly continued her literary activity. Kenji was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1944 and sent to Abashiri Prison , but after the GHQ ordered the immediate release of all political prisoners after Japan's defeat in the war, Kenji was released in October 1945 after twelve years in prison. The approximately 900 letters that she exchanged with her husband were later subjected to a selection by both and after Yuriko's death published as Jūni-nen no Tegami ( 十二年 の 手紙 , dt. "The letters of the twelve years").

The effect after the war

When the Communist Party became active again after the war, Yuriko worked vigorously on the social movement and its writing. She was also exempt from writing during the war and left behind numerous works such as Fūchisō ( 風 知 草 , dt. "The grass that knows the wind"), Banshū Heiya ( 播 州 平野 , dt. "The Banshū plain") or Dōhyō ( 道 標 , German "signpost"). She described a large part of her eventful life in the form of novels. He was also a member of the Central Committee of the New Japan Literary Society and the leadership of the Democratic Women's Association , under the leadership of the Communist Party, she tried to promote the literary and women's movement.

death

By disagreements within the party over the policy direction under occupation and the Red Purge the activities of the Communist Party were in 1950 severely limited, and Kenji, who was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, target of the purges was and was the leader of the International Group with faced a split in the party. In this critical situation, Yuriko continued writing and promoting the party. In the same year she completed the three parts of her novel Dōhyō , which is about her experiences in the Soviet Union. But she died unexpectedly of blood poisoning in January of the next year (1951) . She was 51 years old.

After death

After her death, Kenji settled the disagreements and became general secretary of the revitalized Communist Party. Yuriko continued to be highly esteemed as his wife and the most important author of proletarian literature. Fifty years after her death (2001), the Shin Nihon Shuppansha publishing house began to publish all of her works, which were completed in 2004 with 33 volumes. Katō Shūichi and the chairman of the CP Fuwa Tetsuzō as well as the former CP member Tsutsumi Seiji expressed their recommendation for this complete edition.

Major works

• Mazushiki Hitobito no Mure (1916)
• Nobuko (1924)
• 1932-nen no Haru ( 一九 三 二年 の 春 , Eng . "The spring of 1932", 1932)
• Chibusa ( 乳房 , German "The mother's breast", 1935)
• Sugigaki ( 杉 垣 , German "The Cedar Hedge", 1939)
• Sangetsu no daiyon Nichō ( 三月 の 第四 日 曜 , Eng . "The fourth Sunday in March", 1940)
• Banshū Heiya (1946)
  • dt. The Banshu Plain . Established in 1960.
• Fūchisō (1946)
• Futatsu no Niwa ( 二 つ の 庭 , Eng. "Two Gardens", 1947)
• Dōhyō (1950)

literature

• Gössmann, Hilaria: Writing as Liberation. Autobiographical novels and short stories by women authors of the Proletarian Literature Movement of Japan . Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1996, (Iaponia Insula Volume 4)
• Simone Müller: Miyamoto Yuriko's theoretical writings on Japanese post-war literature in Japanese writers 1890-2006 (Eduard Klopfenstein, ed.) In the journal of the Swiss Asian Society, Asian Studies LXI-2-2007, pp. 279–307, Verlag Peter Lang AG, Bern, ISSN  0004-4717

Web links

Commons : Yuriko Miyamoto  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Miyamoto Yuriko in the catalog of the German National Library
• Digitized works at Aozora Bunko (Japanese)
• Miyamoto Yuriko Complete Edition (Shin Nihon Shuppansha) (Japanese)

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Miyamoto is the family name, Yuriko the first name.