SOURCE: "Yosano Akiko: The Early Years," in Japan Quarterly, Vol. XXXVII, No. 1, January-March, 1990, pp. 37–54.

In the following excerpt, Beichman evaluates Akiko's early work and explores her development as a poet.

Yosano Akiko is one of the many poets that most Japanese know and very few non-Japanese do. One reason is probably the difficulty of recreating the music of poetry in a foreign language, especially the music of the 31-syllable traditional tanka, Akiko's preferred form. Another more important one is Akiko's uncertain position in the canon of modern Japanese literature, which has kept her work from being treated with the seriousness it deserves.

Until recently, conventional wisdom held that after the age of 23, when she published Midaregami (Tangled Hair, 1901), one of the classics of modern Japanese poetry, Akiko wrote almost nothing of permanent value. This in spite of the fact that she published prodigiously in a variety of genres...