Fumiko Nakajō
Fumiko Nakajō was a Japanese tanka poet.
Life
Fumiko Nakajō attended the Tokyo Academy of Home Economics and studied tanka with Ikeda Kikan, a scholar of Japanese literature. Married in 1942, she gave birth to four children before the marriage was divorced. Diagnosed with breast cancer, she underwent mastectomies in 1952 and 1953. Shortly before her death in 1954, a series of her poems were printed in Tanka kenkyū and Tanka magazines with the recommendation of writer Yasunari Kawabata, and her first book, the collection Chibusa sōshitsu, was published. A second collection, Hana no genkei, appeared posthumously. Many of her poems addressed her illness, and she sometimes altered the tanka form to make it more expressive.There are memorials to her at the Tokachi Gokoku Shrine, beside the Obihiro Shrine, and behind the Obihiro Centennial Memorial Hall.