Status Updates From Reflections on the Way to t...

“even though I am busy with all sorts of things, nothing ever gets done.” -Kanno Sugako

“The government knows how to punish people well. But I ask them, ‘Have you decided ways to help those who have paid for their crimes? Can you guarantee that, once free, they will not be exposed to the hazards of starvation, and long for the security of prison life?’l -Fukuda Hideko, imprisoned in Japan from 1885 to 1889

As long as we live in this kind of society we are bound to experience the same miserable tragedy. We are not watching a movie or a play. We are facing the real world, our own world. But things will get better after we have endured all this pain and sorrow... Let's think about the future.

...Kaneko and Pak expected to be executed...[when] the chief of Ichigaya prison...handed Kaneko the certificate [of reprieve], she glared at him and tore the document to bits.

These women are not fucking around. Her male partner grateful fi get life imprisonment instead but Kaneko seh, Pardon from "benevolent emperor" of a government I was planning to fuck up going where?

Kanno went to the police station to inquire about her comrades and was shocked to see [their brutal treatment]...she too was thrown in jail for visiting [them]. This experience convinced Kanno that peaceful change was not possible under the existing system. "It is necessary...to arouse the people of the society by instigating riots, undertaking revolutionary action, and engaging in assassinations."

OK, girl.

Strong first showing in the introduction besides one or two questions. Especially great to see poems by writers like Yosano Akiko in their original context.