Girl in a Box The Tangled Life of Japanese Poet, Yosano Akiko

By: Jean Gordon Kocienda

Published by Sibylline Press, 2026-04-21

In early twentieth century Japan, women have few rights. Yet one precocious poet - a brooding daughter, locked in her room at night by protective parents - runs away from home to live a life of her choosing.
She falls in love with a fellow poet and follows him across Siberia to Paris, where they witness the last days of the Belle Époque. She perseveres through poverty, back-to-back pregnancies, infidelity, earthquake, and fire, to become a name every Japanese schoolchild knows today as a pioneering feminist poet and the first person to translate the classical Tale of Genji into modern Japanese.

In her single-minded dedication to her art, she inflicts wounds on a daughter that echo from her own childhood. She sets out to make amends, knowing it may be too late. Based on the life of poet Yosano Akiko (1878-1942) and filled with original translations of her poetry and writing, A Poet's Blood will feel familiar to anyone who has juggled career, family, and personal freedom.