Okamoto Kanoko: Life and Major Works

Born in 1889 into a wealthy merchant family in Aoyama, Tokyo; her real name was Ōnuki Kano. She studied at Atomi Girls' School and, joining Yosano Akiko's New Poetry Society, began her career as a poet. In 1910 she married the cartoonist Okamoto Ippei, and the following year gave birth to her eldest son, Tarō (later the artist Okamoto Tarō). After suffering through her husband's dissipation and the deaths of a younger brother and sister, she became deeply devoted to Buddhism and wrote essays and scholarly works as a student of Buddhism. Encouraged in her later years by Kawabata Yasunari and others, she began in earnest as a novelist, making her literary debut in 1936 with "Tsuru wa Yamiki" ("The Crane Was Ailing"), drawn from her relationship with Akutagawa Ryūnosuke. She went on to publish one work after another — "Boshi Jojō" ("Mother and Child, a Lyric"), "Kingyo Ryōran" ("Riot of Goldfish"), "Rōgishō" ("Notes of an Aging Geisha") — celebrating life and steeped in an aesthetic, sensual eroticism. She died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1939 at the age of 49, and many of her major works were published posthumously.