was a bestselling Japanese poet; her first

anthology In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs or excerpts by different authors. In genre fiction, the term ''anthology'' typically categ ...

''Kujikenaide'' (″Don't lose heart″), published in 2009, sold 1.58 million copies. In comparison, poetry book sales of 10,000 are considered successful in Japan. Her anthology also topped Japan's

Oricon , established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics and information on music and the music industry in Japan and Western music. It started as, which was founded by Sōkō Koike in Nov ...

bestseller chart. It was originally self-published, but upon seeing its success the publisher

Asuka Shinsha Asuka may refer to: People * Asuka (name), a list of people * Asuka (wrestler), professional wrestler * Asuka (wrestler, born 1998), professional wrestler also known as Veny outside of Japan Places In Japan * , an area in Yamato Province (now N ...

reissued it, with new artwork, in 2010. It contains 42 poems. After back pain forced Shibata to give up her hobby of classical Japanese dance, she turned to writing poetry at the age of 92, at the suggestion of her son Kenichi. As of 2011 she was writing poems for a second anthology, lived alone in the Tokyo suburbs, and was a widow. There was a TV documentary about Shibata in December 2010. Shibata died on January 20, 2013 in a nursing home in Utsunomiya, north of Tokyo. She was 101.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shibata, Toyo 1911 births 2013 deaths Japanese centenarians Women centenarians 21st-century Japanese poets