Miyamoto Yuriko

(née Chujo). Born Feb. 13, 1899, in Tokyo; died there Jan. 21, 1951, Japanese writer. Member of the Communist Party of Japan (1931).

Miyamoto was the daughter of an architect. Her first significant work, the novella Poor People (1916), was about the impoverished life of the peasants. Her autobiographical novel Nobuko (1924–26) dealt with the social problems of the family, marriage, and the fate of the intelligentsia in bourgeois society. After her visit to the USSR (1927–29), Miyamoto was active in the Japanese proletarian literary movement. Her novellas Hour by Hour (1932) and The Breast (1935) were about Japanese revolutionaries.

During World War II, Miyamoto was repeatedly arrested. In 1945 she was one of the founders of the association of democratic writers, Shin Nihon Bungakukai (New Japan Literary Society). In the postwar years, Miyamoto wrote the novellas Banshu Plain (1946–47), Two Houses (1947), and Landmarks (1947–49), which gave a detailed portrayal of Japanese society in the 1920’s and 1930’s.

Miyamoto’s work was a major achievement of socialist realism in Japan. The Kobayashi Takiji and Miyamoto Yuriko Literary Prizes are awarded to progressive writers of Japan.