Publisher's Synopsis
Born in central Tokyo in 1920, Ishigaki Rin was one of the most daring and gifted poets of Japan's postwar cultural renaissance. She knew Japan before the war, during it, and afterwards, saw it move from hubris to disastrous defeat - which included the destruction of her family home during one of the worst firebombings of Tokyo in 1945 - to restoration into the community of nations. Her poetry is witness to this history as seen from her own specific viewpoint, that of a single woman working in a bank as the only support for her six-member family, at first engaged in labor union activities, but later moving to a politically more independent position.
