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The Prison Memoirs of a Japanese Woman
Kaneko Fumiko (1903-1926) wrote this memoir while in prison after being convicted of plotting to assassinate the Japanese emperor. Despite an early life of misery, deprivation, and hardship, she grew up to be a strong and independent young woman. When she moved to Tokyo in 1920, she gravitated to left-wing groups and eventually joined with the Korean nihilist Pak Yeol to form a two-person nihilist organization. Two days after the Great Tokyo Earthquake, in a general wave of anti-leftist and anti-Korean hysteria, the authorities arrested the pair and charged them with high treason. Defiant to the end (she hanged herself in prison on July 23, 1926), Kaneko Fumiko wrote this memoir as an indictment of the society that oppressed her, the family that abused and neglected her, and the imperial system that drove her to her death.
248 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1991
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About the author
Kaneko Fumiko
8 books13 followersFumiko Kaneko (金子 文子, Kaneko Fumiko, January 25, 1903 – July 23, 1926) was a Japanese anarchist and nihilist. She was convicted of plotting to assassinate members of the Japanese Imperial family.
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October 31, 2020A brutal memoir about Fumiko Kaneko's abusive upbringing and her search for freedom through nihilism.
A kid pawned this off on me on tour one day and I set it aside and forgot about it for a couple years. Turns out it was great and I should have read it right away.
Some more:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/libra...
A kid pawned this off on me on tour one day and I set it aside and forgot about it for a couple years. Turns out it was great and I should have read it right away.
Some more:
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/libra...
September 3, 2015
This book took me to early 20th century Japan and Korea. I could see the the snow covered paths winding through the ceder hills and the old paper walls with tears in the panels. However, I had a hard time trusting Kaneko's perceptions as a memoirist. She definitely suffered a lot as an illegitimate child of a wealthy man and a working class mother. She was in a position where she could not fit neatly into the rigorous hierarchy of imperial Japan. She started school late because as an "unregistered" child her parents could not sign her up for school. Later on, living with her father's family, she wasn't allowed to play with the working class children because it would tarnish the family name (though she was still denied the privilege of using that name).
Still, Kaneko was very young when she wrote this, only 23, and some of the bitterness towards her parents struck me as unreasonable. Kaneko believes her mother did not love her, but the sacrifices her mother makes for her lead me to believe she probably did, even though she did make mistakes in her life. Kaneko seems to have grudges towards just about everyone she interacts with. She'll report a positive interaction with someone, then a few pages latter delve into how that person wronged her--just like everyone else. Many of these supposed wrongs are very slight, like a teasing remark about her clothes. This gives me the impression that she has some cognitive distortions that caused her to see people more negatively than they deserve. Really, she isn't too different than the bratty young anarchist you find on college campuses today. I still really enjoyed the book, and I learned a lot about the lives of working class people in imperial Japan.
Still, Kaneko was very young when she wrote this, only 23, and some of the bitterness towards her parents struck me as unreasonable. Kaneko believes her mother did not love her, but the sacrifices her mother makes for her lead me to believe she probably did, even though she did make mistakes in her life. Kaneko seems to have grudges towards just about everyone she interacts with. She'll report a positive interaction with someone, then a few pages latter delve into how that person wronged her--just like everyone else. Many of these supposed wrongs are very slight, like a teasing remark about her clothes. This gives me the impression that she has some cognitive distortions that caused her to see people more negatively than they deserve. Really, she isn't too different than the bratty young anarchist you find on college campuses today. I still really enjoyed the book, and I learned a lot about the lives of working class people in imperial Japan.
July 30, 2017
This memoir is devastating. She was such a brilliant young woman and to see her ambitions thwarted because she was poor, because she was a woman... and then to die so young and for nothing.
November 29, 2023
An anarchist once said: "I hope that you feel that there ought to be some zone of autonomy around yourself, and that when you yourself are used as a mere tool or device of some other person, some important principle or reality is being violated or denied [...] if you would not endorse your own complete subjection to the will of another person, I think you ought to extend your [endorsement] to any other person."
If there was anyone who embodied this outlook, it was Kaneko Fumiko.
If there was anyone who embodied this outlook, it was Kaneko Fumiko.
July 23, 2013
Kaneko Fumiko was an absolutely brilliant thinker and writer. I will not go into details here, but all I can say is that this book will provide you with a wealth of thought provoking material to consider for years to come. It is a shame that she was put into the circumstances that she was, but she handles it in a way that only she knows how.
September 4, 2013
If I have a hero, this is her.
June 5, 2025
A beautiful, raw account of an abused, poor, but steadfast woman. In 1923 she was arrested for "conspiring against the emperor", but more so because she was in love with a Korean socialist. Through this work we hear her own voice, her own thoughts and her own discontent with life, love and the rigid society around her.
She didn't achieve much in her life and she didn't become famous after death like other artists, but her autobiography that she wrote while in prison and preparing to commit suicide, is still very impactful. She sheds light onto the real class divide and capitalist struggle of modernising Japan.
She didn't achieve much in her life and she didn't become famous after death like other artists, but her autobiography that she wrote while in prison and preparing to commit suicide, is still very impactful. She sheds light onto the real class divide and capitalist struggle of modernising Japan.
September 10, 2020
I loved it. Japan's cultural and historical context is an interesting one to situate leftist social movements in. It's fantastic and inspiring to read of such a woman in such a time!
"Although I had once pinned all my hopes on putting myself through school, believing that I could thereby make something of myself, I now realized the futility of this all too clearly. No amount of struggling for an education is going to help one get ahead in this world. And what does it mean to get ahead anyway? Is there any more worthless lot than the so-called great people of this world? What is so admirable about being looked up to by others? I do not live for others. What I had to achieve was my own freedom, my own satisfaction. I had to be myself. I had been the slave of too many people, the plaything of too many men. I had never lived for myself. I had to do my own work; but what was it? I wanted so badly to find it and to set about accomplishing it."
"I felt that even if one did not have an ideal vision of society, one could have one’s work to do. Whether it was successful or not was not our concern; it was enough that we believed it to be a valid work. The accomplishment of that work, I believed, was what our real life was about. Yes. I want to carry out a work of my own; for I feel that by so doing our lives are rooted in the here and now, not in some far-off ideal goal."
"Although I had once pinned all my hopes on putting myself through school, believing that I could thereby make something of myself, I now realized the futility of this all too clearly. No amount of struggling for an education is going to help one get ahead in this world. And what does it mean to get ahead anyway? Is there any more worthless lot than the so-called great people of this world? What is so admirable about being looked up to by others? I do not live for others. What I had to achieve was my own freedom, my own satisfaction. I had to be myself. I had been the slave of too many people, the plaything of too many men. I had never lived for myself. I had to do my own work; but what was it? I wanted so badly to find it and to set about accomplishing it."
"I felt that even if one did not have an ideal vision of society, one could have one’s work to do. Whether it was successful or not was not our concern; it was enough that we believed it to be a valid work. The accomplishment of that work, I believed, was what our real life was about. Yes. I want to carry out a work of my own; for I feel that by so doing our lives are rooted in the here and now, not in some far-off ideal goal."
May 15, 2018
Fumiko relates existentialism (and lack thereof) in her own words. As somebody facing a terminal illness, I can personally relate to how she rightfully distrusted activists and avatars. There are no greater evils in this world than cliques and capital, and there’s much to be said on the conventionalism ascribed to modernity as well as legislature. This memoir reflects upon agency, autonomy, and abuse: how these three things coalesce to cultivate exploitation and excess wherein people are largely to blame as passive populists none the wiser to dissent, content to bow in their chains.
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February 10, 2026"Having observed the social reality that all living things are incessantly engaged in a struggle for survival, that they kill each other to survive, I concluded that if there is an absolute, universal law on earth, it is the reality that the strong eat the weak. This, I believe, is the law and truth of the universe. Now that I have seen the truth about the struggle for survival, and the fact that the strong win and the weak lose, I cannot join the ranks of the idealists who adopt an optimistic mode of thinking which dreams of the construction of a society that is without authority and control. As long as all living things do not disappear from this earth, the power relations based on the principle [of the strong crushing the weak] will persist.... So I decided to deny the rights of authority, rebel against them, and stake not only my own life, but that of all humanity in this endeavor."
"You know, people are funny. Even if they're only going to buy one pad o paper, they'd like to buy it in a fancy store if they can. So a shop that's doing badly is just going to do worse and worse, while a shop that's thriving is going to do better and better business all the time. If you want to sell, you've got to make your place look good."
"Was what Christianity taught really true? Was it not just something to anesthetize people's hearts? If sincerity and love were unable to change people and make the world a better place to love, that kind of teaching was only deception."
"Socialism did not have anything particularly new to teach me; however, it provided me with the theory to verify what I already knew emotionally from my own past. I was poor then; I am poor now. Because of this I have been overworked, mistreated, tormented, oppressed, deprived of my own freedom, exploited, and ruled by people with money. I had always harbored a deep antagonism toward people with that kind of power and a deep sympathy for people from backgrounds like mine. The sympathy I felt for Ko, the menial at my grandmother's in Korea; the feeling, almost as for a comrade, toward the poor dog they kept; and the boundless sympathy I felt for all the oppressed, maltreated, exploited Koreans I have not written about here but whom I saw while at my grandmother's--all were expressions of this. Socialist ideology merely provided the flame that ignited this antagonism and this sympathy, long smoldering in my heart."
"What is revolution, then, but the replacing of one power with another?"
"You know, people are funny. Even if they're only going to buy one pad o paper, they'd like to buy it in a fancy store if they can. So a shop that's doing badly is just going to do worse and worse, while a shop that's thriving is going to do better and better business all the time. If you want to sell, you've got to make your place look good."
"Was what Christianity taught really true? Was it not just something to anesthetize people's hearts? If sincerity and love were unable to change people and make the world a better place to love, that kind of teaching was only deception."
"Socialism did not have anything particularly new to teach me; however, it provided me with the theory to verify what I already knew emotionally from my own past. I was poor then; I am poor now. Because of this I have been overworked, mistreated, tormented, oppressed, deprived of my own freedom, exploited, and ruled by people with money. I had always harbored a deep antagonism toward people with that kind of power and a deep sympathy for people from backgrounds like mine. The sympathy I felt for Ko, the menial at my grandmother's in Korea; the feeling, almost as for a comrade, toward the poor dog they kept; and the boundless sympathy I felt for all the oppressed, maltreated, exploited Koreans I have not written about here but whom I saw while at my grandmother's--all were expressions of this. Socialist ideology merely provided the flame that ignited this antagonism and this sympathy, long smoldering in my heart."
"What is revolution, then, but the replacing of one power with another?"
February 14, 2026
Fumiko Kaneko was arrested in 1923 for "conspiring against the emperor." As the book opens she is going into court for questioning by the judge. After going into her family history. Her material grandparents are listed as her parents and her mother is listed as her older sister. Her father is listed as her brother-in-law. Her father left her mother then proceeded the marry her mother's younger sister. By this time the judge declares "You must have had a hard life."
After the interrogation the judge orders Fumiko to write about her past life. This can be used to help understand the background of oneself to explain why the person acted as they did. This account does not include anything that has to do with her trial. After the trial ends Fumiko requests this written account of her life be return, in turn she sent it to her comrades it hopes they will publish it. "I would like all people who wish to better this world to read this." I hope so too.
This is her story. A very raw, emotional life of an intelligent woman who withstood abuse and still managed to survive when all seemed to be against her.
After the interrogation the judge orders Fumiko to write about her past life. This can be used to help understand the background of oneself to explain why the person acted as they did. This account does not include anything that has to do with her trial. After the trial ends Fumiko requests this written account of her life be return, in turn she sent it to her comrades it hopes they will publish it. "I would like all people who wish to better this world to read this." I hope so too.
This is her story. A very raw, emotional life of an intelligent woman who withstood abuse and still managed to survive when all seemed to be against her.
August 18, 2022
Highest rec I can give.
Robert Eggers gets a lot of praise for making his movies seem almost like science fiction for turning the past almost into science fiction with his deeply the worldview and customs of the times shaped their thoughts and actions to the point they might as well be aliens. But is it actually accurate? I guess this takes place decades after even the lighthouse but you change a few things and it might as well take place today.
This is just as relaxant now as 100 years ago. You’ve got all the familiar faces from from the narcissistic (pathologically) parent to the horny priest, the small business tyrants and the dsa sex fiend, they’re all here.
Also a good reminder that people who called themselves anarchists used to not just be 13 year olds composing that bedtime is an oppressive side affect of capitalism or Libertarians that got hit in the head so much they became too stupid to breathe
I can’t find the quote or remember who it’s from but it’s some shit about (paraphrasing heavily) how many countless geniuses have spent their whole lives toiling away at some menial task if not just living life under slavery. Fumiko almost escaped that fate by killing the emperor but unfortunately she got caught and escaped it by writing this absolute banger
Robert Eggers gets a lot of praise for making his movies seem almost like science fiction for turning the past almost into science fiction with his deeply the worldview and customs of the times shaped their thoughts and actions to the point they might as well be aliens. But is it actually accurate? I guess this takes place decades after even the lighthouse but you change a few things and it might as well take place today.
This is just as relaxant now as 100 years ago. You’ve got all the familiar faces from from the narcissistic (pathologically) parent to the horny priest, the small business tyrants and the dsa sex fiend, they’re all here.
Also a good reminder that people who called themselves anarchists used to not just be 13 year olds composing that bedtime is an oppressive side affect of capitalism or Libertarians that got hit in the head so much they became too stupid to breathe
I can’t find the quote or remember who it’s from but it’s some shit about (paraphrasing heavily) how many countless geniuses have spent their whole lives toiling away at some menial task if not just living life under slavery. Fumiko almost escaped that fate by killing the emperor but unfortunately she got caught and escaped it by writing this absolute banger
August 11, 2018
One of books which taught me not to judge somebody's opinion without knowing its background. Extreme thought must come from extreme condition, one quote in this books which a real hit to me was " I will live as I cannot afford to die", such expression must come from a deeply depressed person. Broadly speaking, absorbing message from this book, policy maker must also consider thoroughly background from actions conducted by people, not just merely criminalize it which does not solve the real problem.
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February 1, 2022I didn't even mean to read the whole book. I only came across this writer by chance, and then couldn't stop reading this.
Patriarchy truly is disgusting. It really is much of the same, from Japan and across the world. I think it's easy to forget this, because in many developed countries including Japan, women have accomplished such great strides. But the fact of the matter is, the same glimpses of patriarchy we see today and wince at is often accompanied by similar practices elsewhere from the past, across many if not outright most widespread cultures, religions, and modern-day countries.
Patriarchy truly is disgusting. It really is much of the same, from Japan and across the world. I think it's easy to forget this, because in many developed countries including Japan, women have accomplished such great strides. But the fact of the matter is, the same glimpses of patriarchy we see today and wince at is often accompanied by similar practices elsewhere from the past, across many if not outright most widespread cultures, religions, and modern-day countries.
August 23, 2022
I don't remember how I found this book -- it might have been the serendipity of a mutual friend on Goodreads adding it -- but I'm glad I read it. A compelling account of a hard life. Kaneko's family life seems uniquely Japanese in its cruelty, and also identifiable in any kind of unhappy family in life and fiction. Though part of the Marxist / anarchist library, I would not say this is a manifesto, just a window into the reality of poverty and abuse.
February 6, 2026
Kaneko Fumiko you did nothing wrong💔
“My presence will shortly be
effaced from this earth. I believe, however, that every phenomenon continues as such to exist in eternal actuality even though it be physically obliterated. I now lay down the pen with which I have written this clumsy account, perfectly calm and at peace.”
“My presence will shortly be
effaced from this earth. I believe, however, that every phenomenon continues as such to exist in eternal actuality even though it be physically obliterated. I now lay down the pen with which I have written this clumsy account, perfectly calm and at peace.”
February 6, 2022
I felt what the writer's feelings. Such a story of this world how not all people suffering from pain in this life, poor and hardly go to school because of no money will be a rich. This is great book memoir.
July 22, 2018
what an amazing and powerful woman she was, in spite of her circumstances. dont let her die!
May 27, 2021
Imperfect as literature
Perfect as a personal account of her own life
Perfect as a personal account of her own life
December 2, 2023
4.70.
Read for HIST 317.
Read for HIST 317.
October 15, 2025
if i ever wrote a memoir, i wanna write it like this
buuuut man so depresso, like i felt happy she died so she could escape u know
buuuut man so depresso, like i felt happy she died so she could escape u know
January 10, 2023
One of the best books I have ever read. Even after several years since I have read it, I still think about it, along with her words and thoughts regularly. It has impacted me deeply and I look up to her. Rest in Peace, Fumiko.
December 19, 2020
Fumiko Kaneko's memoirs show her as a paragon of vitality. Throughout her life everything worked against her, as if the world itself conspired to kick her down, metaphorically as well as physically. Through all this she never ceases to struggle, never gives up. The book hardly goes on about her readings and ideas, so one must look elsewhere for that (other reviews cite an additional document), but her life and brief declarations of her thoughts show clearly the why of her nihilism. It is a shame she did not get to live out a longer, better life; yet she lived as she would, with utmost resolution. We don't live for some possible better future - we live now, for now. We live because we can't afford to die. This is Fumiko's nihilism, and her triumph over life and all those who tried kicking her spirit down.
July 12, 2015
Powerful.
January 19, 2026
Forgot I read this last year for a class… I enjoyed it
April 14, 2025
Filled with emotions I forgot I had while reading this beautiful piece of a woman’s mind.
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July 14, 2017Fascinating look into the makings of a nihilistic egoist in 1920s Japan.
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