Japanese Novelist and Miyamoto Yuriko: Communist, Feminist, and Torture
Lee Jay Walker
Modern Tokyo Times
The Japanese novelist and short-story writer Miyamoto Yuriko (1899–1951) could easily have slipped into the soft, conformist tapestry of her era. Instead, born into privilege yet unwilling to be sheltered by it, she chose the sharper path: to remain faithful to her own political and social convictions, no matter the cost.
That cost was brutally exacted during the storm of rising nationalism and militarism in the early Shōwa Period. In 1942, under harsh interrogation and torture, Miyamoto suffered a devastating heatstroke—an affliction that shadowed her health for the remainder of her life until her passing in 1951. Yet she refused to yield. Her steadfastness was not born of obstinacy alone, but of unyielding commitment to her communist ideals, which she regarded as inseparable from the struggle for human dignity.
Her sense of justice emerged early, during her studies at Ochanomizu Girls’ Middle School in Tokyo, where she first witnessed the stark inequalities woven into daily life. Economic injustice drew her toward socialism, a current that runs visibly through works such as Noson (“Farming Village”) and Mazushiki Hitobito no Mure (“A Crowd of Poor People”). Over time, feminism, too, became an essential pillar of her worldview. For Miyamoto, the liberation of women and the liberation of the oppressed were not separate threads—they were part of the same tapestry she sought to re-weave through both her literature and her life.
Miyamoto was already a voracious reader in her teenage years, devouring books as though each page were a doorway into a larger, more troubling world. The voices that shaped her youth were formidable: Chekhov’s quiet melancholy, Dostoyevsky’s tormented introspection, Gorky’s revolutionary fervor, Nietzsche’s challenging provocations, Poe’s shadows, Rolland’s humanism, Tolstoy and Turgenev’s moral landscapes, and Shakespeare’s vast, unshakeable humanity. Alongside these giants, she immersed herself in the rising brilliance of Meiji and early Taishō writers, absorbing their attempts to reconcile modernity, identity, and social change.
Her years in the Soviet Union (1927–1930) left an indelible mark. It is fashionable to say she never truly saw “the real” Soviet Union—but then, who ever fully sees a nation? Even today, countless visitors to America never grasp the enormity of its own hardships: the silent toll of overdose deaths, sprawling homelessness, and other deep-rooted social crises. In the same way, Miyamoto’s Soviet experience was shaped by what stood before her eyes in that moment of history. To her, the collectivization schemes, the ambitions of planned development, and the prominent role of women likely appeared vivid, modern, and full of promise—especially when contrasted with a world in which slavery remained legal in Mecca into the 1960s, European empires still fed on distant lands, and the Great Depression was plunging millions into despair.
From 1932 to 1942, Miyamoto lived under the constant shadow of surveillance and repression. Arrest followed arrest; imprisonment became a recurring punctuation mark in her life. In total, she spent roughly two years in prison, sharing hardship with countless other Japanese communists who refused to abandon their convictions.
Yet despite every interrogation, every cell, every attempt to break her spirit, Miyamoto carried her ideals with her until the end. Her loyalty to communism was not casual—it was the compass by which she steered her life, even when the journey cost her dearly.
In the fragile years before her death in 1951—still burdened by the lingering damage inflicted during her brutal interrogation in 1942—Miyamoto wrote with striking constancy, as though literature itself were the breath that kept her going. Despite her failing health, new works continued to emerge from her pen: Banshū Heiya (“The Banshū Plain,” 1947), Fūchisō (“The Weathervane Plant,” 1947), Futatsu no Niwa (“The Two Gardens,” 1948), and Dohyō (“Landmark,” 1950).
These late novels read almost like acts of defiance—quiet but unwavering. To her final days, Miyamoto refused to yield either to the rising tide of anti-communism in postwar Japan or to the relentless decline of her own body. Writing became her last stand, her final gesture of loyalty to the ideals she had carried through every hardship. In this way, she left the world exactly as she had lived within it: unbowed, unbroken, and profoundly committed to the dignity of the oppressed.
Modern Tokyo News is part of the Modern Tokyo Times group
http://moderntokyotimes.com Modern Tokyo Times – International News and Japan News
http://sawakoart.com – Sawako Utsumi’s website and Modern Tokyo Times artist
https://moderntokyonews.com Modern Tokyo News – Tokyo News and International News
PLEASE JOIN ON TWITTER
https://twitter.com/MTT_News Modern Tokyo Times
PLEASE JOIN ON FACEBOOK