MIYAMOTO YURIKO

(1899–1951)

   Miyamoto, nee Chujo, Yuriko was a socialist and feminist novelist. Miyamoto’s first major work was a short story published during her teens, which won a prize sponsored by the Shirakaba literary circle. During her career, she traveled to the United States, where she met (and divorced) her first husband, and to Russia, where she studied Russian literature and met filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. Upon her return, she became a leader in the proletarian literature movement, joined the Japan Communist Party, and married its secretary general. They were both arrested multiple times for their involvement with the party. Miyamoto’s best-known postwar works are two companion novels, Banshu Heiya (1946; tr. Banshu Plain, 1963) and Fuchiso (The Weathervane Plant, 1946), which together won her the Mainichi Cultural Prize in 1947. She died of meningitis at the age of 51.

   See also MARXISM.