Miyamoto Yuriko

Miyamoto Yuriko 宮本 百合子 (1899–1951, née Chūjō) was a Japanese author and social activist during the Taishō and early Shōwa era. She received early recognition for her novella Mazushiki hitobito no mure (A Crowd of Poor Folks, 1916) and particular success for her autobiographical novel Nobuko (1928), which chronicles the eponymous narrator’s relationship with her husband Tsukuda. Miyamoto was a notable Communist and feminist. She and her second husband, Miyamoto Kenji, both served wartime imprisonment for their political associations. Best remembered for her novels, it is the translator’s pleasure to introduce two of her equally distinguished poems: 雨が降っている ‘Rain is Falling’ (1916) and空の美 ‘The Beauty of the Sky’ (1926).