starlings overhead

Endo Kiyoko was born in 1882 in Tokyo. After leaving high school, she worked as a teacher, a railway company clerk, and a reporter as well as becoming involved in political activism (demanding the revision of Article 5 of the Peace Police Law (forerunner of the infamous Peace Preservation Law), which forbade women to engage in political activity; she picketed the National Diet building in men’s clothes and a woman’s traditional hairstyle).

In December 1909 she met the writer Iwano Homei, nine years older than she was, who already had one wife, six children, and countless girlfriends. Five days after their first meeting he was already asking her to live with and marry him. Kiyoko herself had had a troubled love life, once attempting suicide when her “platonic lover” of five years betrayed her (she had refused to sleep with him without marriage, unwilling to become “one of his belongings”). She had no reason whatsoever to trust Iwano, but she wanted a change of scene, and agreed to live with him on the grounds that a) he would never hit her and b) they would live together as friends sharing a house. Each of them had their own room, with both names on the gate. At the time this was unusual enough to bring reporters from the Yorozu Choho [Universal Morning News], to whom Kiyoko said “I’m still hooked on my previous man. I’m not even slightly in love with Iwano,” while Iwano said “She continues to refuse my second condition [ie sex], but I have hopes.” The reporter added a sensationalist headline along the lines of “Two Oddities: Will the Spirit or the Flesh Win?”.

As recorded in her diary, Iwano continued to press his attentions on Kiyoko, using every method in the book from a kiss on the hand to a hint that she must be sexually abnormal if she wasn’t interested. Her former lover visited and Iwano complained that he couldn’t lord it over him; his ex-wife visited to ask for money, remarking snidely “you two seem well matched” (given that she was raising Iwano’s six children, it’s hard to blame her for her tone). Various other friends appeared to observe the situation. Iwano wrote Kiyoko letters addressed from his room to hers. When Kiyoko gave in is not clear, but by the following spring she was calling him her husband and they were working together on his new book. They were officially married three years later in 1913. [It is extremely tempting to think that Dorothy Sayers was influenced by this story when she wrote Strong Poison, except that the chances of her actually having heard about it are for all intents and purposes zero. Proving the universality of certain kinds of male behavior?]

In 1912 Kiyoko had begun writing for Hiratsuka Raicho’s feminist journal Seito [Bluestocking], where she left a vivid impression with her “strong personality, heavy makeup, big hair, and green cape” (Raicho). In 1913, she and Iwano both spoke at a Bluestocking-sponsored lecture series, Iwano on “Men’s Demands” (interrupted by a heckler demanding “so why did you get divorced?”) and Kiyoko on “Ideological Independence and Economic Independence”: men and women were essentially equal and discrimination against women was a problem of society, so women must become both ideologically and economically independent and should have the right to handle their own finances.

Their son Tamio was born in 1914; predictably, Iwano began to lose interest in his wife thereafter, going so far as to sleep with Kambara Fusae, the young Bluestocking staff member engaged by Kiyoko to work with Iwano on a translation. Kiyoko moved out, demanding two-thirds of Iwano’s income into the bargain, to which Iwano grudgingly agreed. In the following two years, however, she sued him twice for failing to pay child support. Iwano sued in return for divorce; Kiyoko won (advised by the judge to settle it amicably, she retorted that she didn’t mind divorcing but she insisted on cash in hand, although Iwano was too broke to pay up). During the trial, her diary of their marriage was published, dedicated by initials to her previous lover. Iwano married Fusae shortly after the divorce was complete (Fusae herself had protested that she had no intention of living off him as his mistress, only taking money for the work she actually did for his book). The newspapers went to town.

In 1917, Kiyoko began to live with an art student ten years younger than she, Endo Tatsunosuke (same family name, no relation), with whom she opened a flower shop; their relationship was ultimately short and conducted amid poverty, but very affectionate from all accounts. Their daughter Aiko was born in 1920; Kiyoko died (of gall bladder problems?) only seven months later (oddly enough, Iwano died in the same year). Tamio was adopted by Araki Ikuko, another Bluestocking staffer, but died in the 1923 earthquake; Aiko was adopted by Kiyoko’s lawyer, Kawaguchi Shozo, and eventually moved to America.

Sources
Mori 1996, Mori 2008
Hasegawa Shigure [I’m tempted to sit down and translate this, one of Shigure’s “Modern Beauties” essays, because it’s so readable—part one describing a very sad group visit to Kiyoko’s grave long after her death, and part two in quasi-fictional form from Kiyoko’s POV shortly after moving in with Iwano, hearing something in the next room and thinking it’s the cat she gave away when she moved, until she realizes it’s her new ?partner snoring. “Losing oneself might be necessary in order to build a bigger self, she told herself.” “She missed him so [while he was away working in Osaka], even the frogs seemed to be croaking o-sa-ka o-sa-ka.”]