Fumiko Nakajō (中城ふみ子 ''Nakajō Fumiko'', real name 野江富美子 ''Noe Fumiko'', November 25, 1922 in

Obihiro is a Cities of Japan, city in Tokachi Subprefecture, Hokkaido, Japan. Obihiro is the only designated city in the Tokachi Subprefecture, Tokachi area. As of July 31, 2023, the city had an estimated population of 163,084. The next most populou ...

Hokkaidō is the second-largest island of Japan and comprises the largest and northernmost prefecture, making up its own region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō from Honshu; the two islands are connected by railway via the Seikan Tunnel. The ...

– August 3, 1954 in

Sapporo is a Cities designated by government ordinance of Japan, designated city in Hokkaido, Japan. Located in the southwest of Hokkaido, it lies within the alluvial fan of the Toyohira River, a tributary of the Ishikari River. Sapporo is the capital ...

) was a Japanese

tanka is a genre of classical Japanese poetry and one of the major genres of Japanese literature. Etymology Originally, in the time of the influential poetry anthology (latter half of the eighth century AD), the term ''tanka'' was used to disti ...

poet.

Life

Fumiko Nakajō attended the Tokyo Academy of Home Economics (later Tokyo Kasei-Gakuin University) and studied tanka with Ikeda Kikan (1896–1956), a scholar of Japanese literature. Married in 1942, she gave birth to four children before the marriage was divorced. Diagnosed with

breast cancer Breast cancer is a cancer that develops from breast tissue. Signs of breast cancer may include a Breast lump, lump in the breast, a change in breast shape, dimpling of the skin, Milk-rejection sign, milk rejection, fluid coming from the nipp ...

, she underwent mastectomies in 1952 and 1953. Shortly before her death in 1954, a series of her poems were printed in Tanka kenkyū and Tanka magazines with the recommendation of writer

Yasunari Kawabata was a Japanese novelist and short story writer whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the 1968 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first Japanese author to receive the award. His works have enjoyed broad international appeal and ...

, and her first book, the collection ''Chibusa sōshitsu'' (乳房喪失, ''Losing My Breasts''), was published. A second collection, ''Hana no genkei'' (花の原型, ''A Prototype of Flowers''), appeared posthumously. Many of her poems addressed her illness, and she sometimes altered the tanka form to make it more expressive. There are memorials to her at the Tokachi Gokoku Shrine, beside the Obihiro Shrine, and behind the Obihiro Centennial Memorial Hall.

Film

In 1955,

Nikkatsu is a Japanese film studio located in Bunkyō. The name ''Nikkatsu'' amalgamates the words Nippon Katsudō Shashin, literally "Japan Motion Pictures". Shareholders are Nippon Television Holdings (35%) and SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation (28.4%). ...

studios produced the film '' The Eternal Breasts'' (also known as ''Forever a Woman''), based on Nakajō's life. It was directed by

Kinuyo Tanaka was a Japanese actress and film director. She had a career lasting over 50 years with more than 250 acting credits, but was best known for her 15 films with director Kenji Mizoguchi, such as ''The Life of Oharu'' (1952) and ''Ugetsu'' (1953). W ...

and starred Yumeji Tsukioka, Ryoji Hayama and

Yōko Sugi was a Japanese actress mainly active in the 1950s, who appeared in films of Mikio Naruse, Kinuyo Tanaka and Tadashi Imai. Biography Sugi was born on 28 October 1928 in what is now Bunkyō ward, Tokyo, Japan. In 1945 she graduated from a Japan ...

References

Bibliography

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Nakajo, Fumiko 1922 births 1954 deaths People from Obihiro Deaths from breast cancer in Japan 20th-century Japanese poets Japanese women poets 20th-century Japanese women writers