Misuzu Kaneko

Misuzu Kaneko (金子 みすゞ) was a Japanese poet, known for her poetry for children.

She was born Teru Kaneko (金子 テル) in the fishing village of Senzaki, now part of Nagato, Yamaguchi prefecture.

Motifs of fishing and the sea often make appearances in her poems.

In 1923, Kaneko became the manager and sole employee of her uncle's small bookstore in Shimonoseki, a town at the southern tip of Honshu.

There, she discovered children's literary magazines such as Akai tori, which were riding the crest of a boom in children's literature and which solicited stories and verse from their readers.

Kaneko first submitted five poems, among them "The Fishes", to four magazines, and was accepted for publication in all of them.

Soon, her poems began appearing in magazines all over the country and she became a literary celebrity.

Over the next five years she published fifty-one more verses.

Kaneko's private life was not as fortunate, however.

In 1926, she entered into a marriage arranged by her uncle, with a clerk in the family bookstore.

A daughter, Fusae, was born in November.

Her new husband was unfaithful and contracted a venereal disease, which he passed on to Kaneko, causing her lifelong physical pain.

He also forced her to stop writing, while putting the family through the strain of four moves within two years to pursue failing business ventures.

After bathing Fusae and sharing a sakuramochi, Kaneko wrote a letter to her husband asking that he let her mother raise the girl instead, and overdosed on sedatives, dying the next day, only a month before her 27th birthday.

Her daughter was ultimately raised by the grandmother.

Representative works include "Me and Little Birds and Bells" and "Big Fishing".

Even if I spread my arms

I cannot fly in the sky at all.

But the bird that can fly

Cannot run on the ground as fast as I.

Even if I shake my body,

I cannot produce pretty sounds,

But the bell that can ring

Doesn't know as many songs as I.

The bell and the bird and I–

All are different and all are good.

This poem is for education and is also used in elementary school

Other than that

Shall we go to Kodama?

She finally divorced him in 1930, but this meant also losing custody of her daughter to her husband.

Japanese law at the time automatically granted the father indisputable custody to the child.

On March 9, 1930, the day before her husband was due to take custody, Kaneko felt no recourse except to commit suicide in protest.

Celebrated during her lifetime, her works fell into obscurity after her death, until being rediscovered in the 1980s.

Since then, she has been regarded as one of Japan's most beloved children's poets.

Kaneko has been compared to Christina Rossetti.

Her poems have been translated into eleven languages.

Kaneko was raised by her mother and grandmother after her father died when she was three.

Kaneko's mother ran a bookstore and felt strongly about reading and education.

While most Japanese girls of that time period were only educated up to sixth grade, Kaneko continued her schooling until the age of seventeen, attending the Ōtsu High School for Girls.

She was described by others as gentle, cheerful, and an excellent student, as well as a voracious reader with strong curiosity about nature.