author
Takeo Arishima
1878–1923
A major voice in modern Japanese literature, he wrote with unusual emotional honesty about love, freedom, conscience, and social inequality. His life ended tragically, but novels such as A Certain Woman and The Descendants of Cain have kept his work widely remembered.
1 Audiobook
Deklaracio
by Takeo Arishima
About the author
Born in Tokyo on March 4, 1878, into a prominent family, he became one of the notable writers associated with the Shirakaba circle in the late Meiji and Taishō periods. He studied at Sapporo Agricultural College, converted to Christianity for a time, and later spent several years in the United States, experiences that helped shape the moral and social questions in his writing.
His fiction is known for its psychological intensity and its concern with individual freedom, love, and responsibility. He is especially remembered for A Certain Woman and The Descendants of Cain, and he was also known for strong humanitarian views, including criticism of social injustice.
His death in Karuizawa on June 9, 1923, in a suicide pact with journalist Akiko Hatano, shocked the literary world and became part of his lasting public image. Even so, his reputation rests on the force of his novels and essays, which continue to stand out for their sympathy, seriousness, and emotional candor.