שיריה האבודים של קָנֵקוֹ מִיסוּזוּ, בקעו מן האמפתיה הטבעית שהייתה לה כלפי כל היצורים החיים והדוממים המאכלסים את היקום שלנו. מרגשים, מינימליסטיים, אוניברסליים, שיריה מבטאים את האמיתות העמוקות ביותר, בפשטות עילאית. ביצירותיה, מיסוזו מנתה אנשים, פרחים, בעלי חיים, וחפצים יום־יומיים שנמצאים שם בקרבנו. כל מה שעשוי להאיר את הנתיב – לפעמים זוהר, לפעמים חשוך – ותמיד חולף, שאנו מכנים, חיים.
היו לה חיים קצרים. יצירתה אבדה בהפצצות על טוקיו במהלך מלחמת העולם השנייה. שיריה נשכחו כליל במשך עשורים, אך נתגלו מחדש הודות לחקר בלשי. היה זה המשורר סֵטסוּאוֹ יזאקי, שהצליח לאתר את אחיה הקשיש של המשוררת, ששמר את שלוש מחברותיה של מיסוזו הכתובות בכתב יד.
מרץ 2011. העם היפני זקוק להתאוששות רוחנית מהתוצאות של רעידת האדמה והצונמי שבא בעקבותיה, שפקדו את המדינה. רצה הגורל, ושיריה של קנקו מיסוזו היו אלה שניחמו וריגשו מיליוני אזרחים. צדק פואטי או נס אומנותי הוא שזיכה את המשוררת להיות אחת המשוררות הלאומיות של יפן כיום.
Kaneko was raised by her mother and grandmother after her father died when she was three. Kaneko's mother ran a bookstore and felt strongly about reading and education. While most Japanese girls of that time period were only educated up to sixth grade, Kaneko continued her schooling until the age of seventeen, attending the Ōtsu High School for Girls. She was described by others as gentle, cheerful, and an excellent student, as well as a voracious reader with strong curiosity about nature.
In 1923, Kaneko became the manager and sole employee of her uncle's small bookstore in Shimonoseki, a town at the southern tip of Honshu. There, she discovered children's literary magazines such as Akai tori, which were riding the crest of a boom in children's literature and which solicited stories and verse from their readers. Kaneko first submitted five poems, among them "The Fishes", to four magazines, and was accepted for publication in all of them. Soon, her poems began appearing in magazines all over the country and she became a literary celebrity. Over the next five years she published fifty-one more verses.
Kaneko's private life was not as fortunate, however. In 1926, she entered into a marriage arranged by her uncle, with a clerk in the family bookstore. A daughter, Fusae, was born in November. Her new husband was unfaithful and contracted a venereal disease, which he passed on to Kaneko, causing her lifelong physical pain. He also forced her to stop writing, while putting the family through the strain of four moves within two years to pursue failing business ventures. She finally divorced him in 1930, but this meant also losing custody of her daughter to her husband. Japanese law at the time automatically granted the father indisputable custody to the child.
On March 9, 1930, the day before her husband was due to take custody, Kaneko felt no recourse except to commit suicide in protest. After bathing Fusae and sharing a sakuramochi, Kaneko wrote a letter to her husband asking that he let her mother raise the girl instead, and overdosed on sedatives, dying the next day, only a month before her 27th birthday. Her daughter was ultimately raised by the grandmother.