Yaeko Nogami - Literary Career

Literary Career

In the 1910s, Nogami submitted poems and short stories to the mainstream literary journal Chuo Koron, Shincho, and to the feminist magazine Seito, and gained a substantial following with fans of the proletarian literature movement. She maintained a correspondence with fellow female writers Yuasa Yoshiko and Miyamoto Yuriko, with whom she shared the sentiment that literature must serve a purpose towards increasing morality and social activism. In 1922, she published Kaijin maru ("The Neptune", tr. 1957), a shocking semi-factual account of four men in the crew of a wrecked fishing boat who must struggle with the choice of starvation or cannibalism.

Nogami started to explore historical fiction in the 1920s, with Oishi Yoshio, a story about one of the Forty-seven Ronin in 1926.

As the Japanese government turned increasingly toward totalitarianism and it appeared that war was inevitable, she and her husband traveled to Europe where they witnessed the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and ominous signs that would lead up to World War II. They returned to Japan prior to the outbreak of WWII, and she concentrated on her writing. In the post-war period, she resumed her contacts with Miyamoto Yuriko, and joined her in the foundation of the Shin Nihon Bungakukai.

Her postwar output was prolific and varied, including Hideyoshi to Rikyu ("Hideyoshi and Rikyu", 1962–1963), in which she explores the relationship between artist and patron (in this case Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Sen no Rikyū). The novel was adapted into the film Rikyu by Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara.