- Home
- Yosano Akiko
Yosano Akiko

Akiko Yosano was the pen name of a Japanese author, poet, pioneering feminist, pacifist, and social reformer, active in late Meiji period, Taisho period, and early Showa period Japan. Her real name was Yosano Shiyo. She is one of the most famous, and most controversial, post-classical woman poets of Japan. Janine Beichman translated a collection of her work and received a PEN/Heim Grant in 2018.
Join PEN America Today
Defend free expression, support persecuted writers, and promote literary culture.
Subscribe
Get updates on events, literary awards, free expression issues, and global news.
Alert Us
PEN America On 
"We don’t know what it is possible for us to feel until we are shown what it is possible for us to imagine"--@adamgopnik in The @NewYorker
@SalmanRushdie and the Power of Words https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/salman-rushdie-and-the-power-of-words #SalmanRushdie
A powerful call from @PENamerica’s @SuzanneNossel urging us to understand that the brutal attempt on #SalmanRushdie’s life is an attack against the freedom to write, read, and think. #wordsmorepowerfulthanknives https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/13/salman-rushdies-entire-life-has-been-an-act-of-defiance
“Instead of just scrolling and sharing links about him and the attack, we can actually read something by Salman Rushdie,” writes Randy Boyagoda: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/salman-rushdie-fatwa-artistic-freedom/671137/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share