Fumiko Kaneko
| Fumiko Kaneko | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
January 25, 1903 Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan |
| Died | July 23, 1926 (aged 23) , Japan |
Fumiko Kaneko (金子 文子 Kaneko Fumiko?, January 25, 1903 – July 23, 1926) was a Japanese anarchist and nihilist. She was convicted of plotting to assassinate members of the Japanese Imperial family.
Fumiko Kaneko was born in the Kotobuki district of Yokohama during the Meiji period in Japan. Her parents were Fumikazu Saeki, a man from a samurai family, and Kikuno Kaneko, the daughter of a peasant, and because they were not officially married, Fumiko could not be registered as a Saeki. She remained unregistered until she was 8 years old, at which point she was registered as her mother’s sister, a fairly common practice for children born out of wedlock. Kaneko recalls that the first few years of her life were fairly happy, as her father was employed as a detective at a police office and cared for his family, though they were fairly poor. However, Fumikazu left his job at the police station, and the family moved around a considerable amount over the next few years. Fumikazu was also increasingly drawn to gambling and drinking, began to abuse Kikuno, and became involved with other women, including Kikuno’s sister Takano. Eventually, Fumikazu left Kikuno and married Takano.
During this time, Fumiko was first confronted with the problems of being an unregistered child. Her circumstances made her “invisible to educational authorities,” and she was not technically allowed to attend school. Some schools eventually permitted her to attend classes, but she was not called in attendance, did not receive report cards, and was ineligible to receive the official certificate of graduation at the end of a class year. Despite these difficulties, including frequent gaps in her attendance, she did very well in school. After Fumiko’s father left, her mother was involved with several other men, but none of these relationships led to better living circumstances and they were nearly always extremely impoverished. Kikuno even considered selling Fumiko to a brothel, claiming that it would be a better life for her, but she abandoned this plan when it turned out that Fumiko would be sent far away to another region of Japan. After several years of these difficult circumstances, Fumiko lived briefly with her maternal grandparents while her mother remarried again. In 1912, her father’s mother, Mutsu Sakei-Iwashita, came to visit, and it was agreed that Fumiko would go back with her to her home in Korea, where she would be adopted by her aunt, who was childless. Before leaving Japan, Fumiko was finally registered as the daughter of her maternal grandparents.
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