Misuzu kaneko biography graphic organizer

Misuzu Kaneko is one of Japan’s most beloved children’s poets.

Misuzu kaneko biography graphic organizer

Born “Teru” in 1903 in a small fishing village in western Japan, she grew up in a family of booksellers and early on became a book lover herself. With the encouragement of her mother and grandmother, she stayed in school until she was 18, a rare achievement for Japanese girls at the time.

She began writing poetry at age 20, and signed her work “Misuzu”, in an allusion to classical Japanese literature meaning “where the bamboo is reaped.” On a whim, she submitted poems to four popular children’s magazines, and remarkably, all her entries were accepted.

Yaso Saijo, a prominent poet who acted as an editor for one of the magazines, likened her work to the British poet Christina Rosetti’s. In 1926, she married a clerk from the family bookstore. A womanizer, Kaneko’s husband was fired from his job at the bookstore soon after they married.

He infected her with gonorrhea, which unfortunately was untreatable at the time and left