Kaneko Misuzu, given name Teru, was a poetess and songwriter from Nagato, Yamaguchi Prefecture, who wrote mainly for children and has been compared to Christina Rossetti. Her hometown was a sardine-fishing village, and scenes of fishing and the sea fill her poetry. After the birth of her child, she divorced her husband, who had contracted venereal disease from the pleasure quarters. Subsequent custody battles led her to commit suicide, with her final request being that her ex-husband allow Kaneko’s mother to rear the child. During her short life, she wrote more than 500 poems, and, though she was forgotten for a time, her poetry was rediscovered in 1982, and one of her poems, “Watashi to kotori to suzu to” (Me, a Bird, and a Bell) is now read in the Japanese national elementary school curriculum. In recent years, her life story has been dramatized in film, drama, and on television.
See also CHILDREN’S LITERATURE.
Historical dictionary of modern Japanese literature and theater. J. Scott Miller. 2009.