SATA INEKO

(1904–1998)

   Sata Ineko, given name Ine, was a novelist from Nagasaki. Before completing elementary school, Sata moved to Tokyo with her parents and worked in a caramel factory. After her first marriage failed, she worked for the literary journal Roba (Donkey), where she met contributors Hori Tatsuo, Nakano Shigeharu, and her future husband Kubokawa Tsurujiro. Her earlier factory experiences formed the basis of her first short story, “Kyarameru kojo kara” (From a Caramel Factory, 1928), which linked her to the proletarian literature movement. After World War II, Sata divorced Kubokawa and joined the Japanese-Soviet Communist Party, from which she was later expelled. She also wrote of the atomic bomb victims. Sata’s career was laden with awards, including the Women’s Literature Prize (1962), the Noma Prize (1972), the Kawabata Yasunari Prize (1976), the Mainichi Art Prize (1983), and the Yomiuri Prize (1985).

   See also FEMINISM; MARXISM; WOMEN IN LITERATURE.