Tsuboi Sakae: Life and Major Works

Born in 1899 on the island of Shōdoshima, Kagawa Prefecture. The daughter of a soy-sauce barrel maker, she spent an impoverished childhood, working at the island's post office and town office before going to Tokyo. She married the proletarian poet Tsuboi Shigeji, and, mixing with the proletarian writer Kuroshima Denji, her fellow islander, and with Hayashi Fumiko, who lived nearby, she nurtured an ambition for a literature grounded in everyday life. In her late thirties she made her literary debut with the story "Daikon no Ha" ("Radish Leaves") and went on to write with a warm eye for the joys and sorrows of ordinary people. Set on her native Shōdoshima, "Nijūshi no Hitomi" ("Twenty-Four Eyes"), depicting the bond between a young woman teacher and her twelve pupils and the tragedy of war, became a nationally beloved book alongside the film directed by Kinoshita Keisuke. Among her other works portraying children and ordinary people are "Kaki no Ki no Aru Ie" ("The House with the Persimmon Tree") and "Haha no Nai Ko to Ko no Nai Haha to" ("A Motherless Child and a Childless Mother"). She died in 1967 at the age of 67.