Miyamoto Yuriko stands as an important figure in the history of both the literature and the women of Japan. Her fame is not attributable to her being an innovator of any new literary technique but to her participating in the proletarian literature movement and in vividly presenting the life of one woman in the troubled society of Japan during the first half of the twentieth century. Determined to reconstruct facts in a realistic fashion, Miyamoto used her own experiences as the core of her writing and, through her style, unveiled to her readers the new and fascinating perspective of a humanist turned proletarian writer. Today her works are invaluable sources of information on Japanese society, the position of women in the early 1900s, and modern Japanese literature as a means of political expression.

During the height of militarism in Japan, Miyamoto openly joined both the Japan Proletarian Writers'...