Kimura Akebono was a Japanese writer. She is best known for her debut work .
Biography
Kimura was born Okamoto Eiko on April 10, 1872, in
Kobe
Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, whic ...
, Japan. Her father, , was a wealthy businessman. He had around 30 children with many women and Kimura was his oldest daughter.
She attended Tokyo Women's Higher School and graduated in 1888. While attending school she studied French, and had hoped to study abroad. However, her father refused to allow her to. She married, then divorced the son of a wealthy merchant on her father's orders, after her husband's misbehavior embarrassed the family.
After graduation Kimura worked at a butcher shop called "Iroha" that her father owned in
Asakusa
is a district in Taitō, Tokyo, Japan. It is known as the location of the Sensō-ji, a Buddhist temple dedicated to the bodhisattva Kannon. There are several other temples in Asakusa, as well as various festivals, such as the .
History
The ...
.
She wrote her first novel, while working at the cash register in the store. The novel was published serially in the
''Yomiuri Shinbun'' in 1889 on the recommendation of
Aeba Koson. Kimura was seventeen years old at the time.
is about a young woman named Hideko who studies abroad in the United Kingdom and trains in the textile industry in the United States. Upon returning to Japan, Hideko starts a textile factory of her own where she trains women and helps them achieve financial independence.
Kimura wrote several other works such as and before she died of
tuberculous peritonitis on October 19, 1890.
Selected works
* , 1889
* , 1889
* , 1890
References
1872 births
1890 deaths
People from Kobe
19th-century Japanese women writers
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