ABSTRACT
The liberation of women was one of the basic concerns of the Meiji intellectuals who struggled with the question of modernizing the self, and thus the women's liberation movement has a long history in modern Japan. Women's concerns, however, were generally left to women intellectuals and treated separately rather than as a part of broad social movements. Miyamoto Yuriko, a leading proletarian writer, stands out in this context as an exceptional figure, as a writer who placed women's concerns at the center of her literature and integrated them with the socialist movement of her time. She dealt with three major concerns throughout her life, concerns which she considered central problems or conflicts to be resolved. They are the questions of consciousness and practice, women's happiness and creativity, and politics and literature. Focusing on her ideas on women, this chapter examines how these central problems and her consciousness of them shaped her creative works and are reflected in them.
