H 381 Telling Lives Chs 5, 6
Sata Ineko b. 1904 Nagasaki
Mother only 15; father 18. Touching Saga Girl's School photo of her mother;
Mother worked at Nagasaki Can Factory; died 1911 age 22 of TB.
Something poignant:
"Study hard so you can become a good wife!"
Sata has a moment later on when her own daughter was 10 or so and Sata was trying to write, her marriage was in trouble, and the word, "Okaasan!!" just came out of her sub-conscious.
In that moment she needed someone to hold her and give her unconditinal love. Maybe it wasn't specifically about her mother but just about needing a "Mom." Somehow, every woman's self-narrative is is the narrative of a daughter who will address her mother at some point (Jo Malin). It has to do with identity and with longing.
Her father thought it would be a good idea for her to work in a caramel factory. Wasn't so much...but would, in the end, provide the framework for her first published writing, From the Caramel Factory.
Her uncle, Sata died. they had a bond, He suported Ineko. At the end of her narrative, she explians how she changed her name from Kubokawa to Sata in memory of her uncle.
Works in Chinese noodle shop, then an Inn where she met the great writer Akutagawa Ryunosuke. Not many parlor maids knew literature like Ineko did. Lacking formal education, she longed for culture and to read so she got a job at the largest bookstore in Tokyo, Maruzen. She has dreams and longings, she wants more intellectual stimulation and "culture," but she has to work. This is life. Human nature is complex -- all her readings teach her this.
She marries a well-off student; marriage fails they try a double suicide?
Recovering at home, she still thirsts after knowledge, reads the journals of the day, specifically, The Central Review (Chuo Koron), but also women's journals.
When she'd throw out new vocabulary she was learning--like the word for authority--in conversation with her father, he dismissed her has having only a zasshi-kyoiku (magazine education). Kind of hypocritcal since he wa the one who made her quit school to work in the caramel factory! Geez, can she catch a break here???
Felt she wsn't quite a poet, not really a "proletarian" either...but she fell in with Nakano Shigeharu and the Roba (Donkey) group while working at a cafe.
At that point, p. 203, she felt she had nothing left to fear. Why was that?
Who were the people with whom she became involved? What kind of people were they? Why doe we think Sata may have been attracted to them?
On p. 208 we learn a bit about Nakano and also what she was rreading in those days. What sort of stuff?
Published From the Caramel Factory in 1928 first in Proletarian Arts, then as a bound volume. She was 24.
How did she work as a proletarian writer? She seemed convinced that her family of origin was more petit bourgeoise than strictly working class, so she felt inauthentic. But what does Barbara Foley's work on American proletarian writers suggest? (212-213)
Takai Toshio was beaten and kicked by the police and a detective slapped Ineko. Fun times in Japan of the 1920s-1930s.
Her huband, Kubokawa, becomes involved with another woman. She experienced the classic conflict brought on by the demands of her work as a writer and the expectations of her as a "wife." What did she want? What was so complicated and messy about what it was like to be a writer in her own right but a spouse to an activist and critic?
Kubokawa wants to marry the other woman. Even down to today, the problem is women have to choose between their work and their marriage. Men do not.
Next, Kubokawa becomes involved with a well-known writer, Tamura Toshiko. End of the line. Sata cuts her hair, changes her name, employs kanji now to writer her name:
稲子 v いね子
And it all comes down to this simple entry in her personal chronology, her Nenpu. So it is between the lines 「 行間」the "gyoma" of her chronology, her 「年譜」that gives her narrative its title! I think that adds power to her assertions: it was just a change she made, an entry, into her life story: but really, it was huge. She left her marriage, got rid of Kubokawa's name--didn't really want any man's name but "Sata" was acceptable because of her uncle who believed in her. So that is how she can characterize herself in her memoir. What do you think we learn about prewar Japan from her story?
Ch. 6 Fukunaga Misao, "Recollections of a Female Communist"
Is this writer the most explicit and critical of the world in which she found herself?
Her point in her title is that she was just an ordinary, rank and file member of the JCP, but she was a woman. Daughter of a typical Meiji patriarch. Women are like the Proletariat in Marxism; Men were the Bourgeoisie. They were the Slave masters, women were the Slaves.
She saw how her father treated her mother. It was her second marraige. She would have left but for Misao.
The ideology of the education was "Good Wife, Wise Mother," Misao had no use for it. She wanted to live in a world where children learned how to be independent and autonomous (what both Taoka Reiun and later Maruyama Masao wanted?) But a "good child" was taught to never make decisions for herself. Just follow the prescribed pathway. If you deviate, you are somehow immoral, or a criminal. If you talk back to the system, you pay the price. Perhaps that is why she decided to resist the system and go with the most radical mode of oppostion she could find.
She wound up at Tokyo Women's College, founded by the Reischauer family, missionaries in Japan, so it offered more academic freedom. She joined the Social Science Research Group which was an outpost of radical, Marxist thought. She met schoolmate Watanabe Taeko who was a JCP member. Read stuff by JCP head Yamakawa Hitoshi, also an article on Kropotkin by Morito Tatsuo who was lecturing at her university. Also read Bukharin, Kautsky, and the underground Communist Manifesto. Even Rudolf Hilferding!
She may have been young and naive, but she assumed that for anyone in favor of revolution, that gender equality would have to be part of the mix. Revolution was about freedom, liberation. But Japanese men had contempt for women she discovered, even though they were Marxists.
They were supposed to be all in with human equality and liberation so why would they ever show contempt for Japaense women? Ah, but they did!
Misao and Taeko visited the up and coming party leader and economist Fukumoto Kazuo. Later she would be labled a "female Fukumotoist" and expelled from the party.
Party tried to get her to shack up with low-ranking party functionary Murao. She is asked to join the party, then asked to hook up with him. She was not itnerested and stood up for herself. Uh, oh. A trouble maker, an "unruly woman"!
But then she did agree to marry Koreeda Kyoji, editor of party paper, The Proletarian News. Smart, up-and-coming party man, nice-looking, so why not? But after their marriage, the only way he knew to treat her was to ignore her. Was not interested in her ideas. Was this marriage arranged by the party just to shut her up?
Mass Arrests March 15, 1928
Women were forming organizations, leagues to advocate for women's rights, but JCP would never ally with them as partners. Women's function was mainly to be a "housekeeper," Disgusting.
Prison Time
She read a lot. What? Hw did she read this work?
Besides literature, she read history. What, who did she read? What could she learn here?
"Ideological Recantation" = Tenko, a reversal of commitment to Marxism and Revolution and an embrace of the monarchy. Dissolution faction in party started the pathway then many of top leaders "recanted," including Koreeda. Misao never did.
When Koreeda did, he also tried to boss her. What happened? What did she tell him? But Koreeda died in prison and she took care of his body....
"It was my misfortune to be born a woman in a disagreeable country like Japan!" she writes. Very strong stuff. Japan between 1935-45 was in a dark space. Everyone was suspicious of the next person (265-65).
Why had Japan become such a horrible place? What is her explanation? What do you think?
What do you think these three women share in common?
Instructions