In Japan, the 20th century renaissance of poetry by women is associated most closely with Yosano Akiko, who first came to prominence at the turn of the century. But there was another renaissance, part of the general flowering of culture that characterized the immediate postwar period. It was then that Ishigaki Rin first achieved fame. Comparatively unknown outside Japan, like most contemporary Japanese poets, Ishigaki, who died last year at the age of 84, had an enthusiastic following in her own country. By introducing her life and her poetry, Professor Beichman will show why.

Janine Beichman has been living in Japan for more than thirty years, where she is a professor in the Department of Japanese Literature at Daito Bunka University. She took her PhD at Columbia University under the guidance of Donald Keene. Her publications in English include two critical biographies, Masaoka Shiki: His Life and Works, and Embracing the Firebird: Yosano Akiko and the Birth of the Female Voice in Modern Japanese Poetry, and the original Noh play Drifting Fires, which has been performed in Japan and the United States. Beichman has also published numerous translations, including Ooka Makoto's Beneath the Sleepless Tossing of the Planets: Selected Poems 1972-1989 ,Poems for All Seasons/Oriori no Uta ; and Setouchi Jakucho's The End of Summer . Her current research centers around two topics: Japanese women poets, in particular Yosano Akiko and Ishigaki Rin; and the tradition of ekphrasis in Japanese art and literature.