Kamichika was born in what is now
Saza, Nagasaki on June 6, 1888. Kamichika grew up in relative poverty due to the death of her father and eldest brother at a young age. After grade school, Kamichika convinced her family Kamichika to allow her to attend an American missionary school for girls in Nagasaki and in 1909 she moved to
Tokyo to train as a teacher at
Tsuda University. At Tsuda University she began contributing to the feminist literary magazine
Bluestocking (青鞜,
Seitō). After graduation she became a teacher at the Aomori Prefectural School for Girls, until she was asked to leave when the school principal discovered her name in an issue of the Bluestocking magazine. In 1914, Kamichika returned to Tokyo and began working as a reporter at the
Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun. Her strong English language abilities led her to be assigned to the politics and society section rather than the home and family section, the topics typically assigned to female reporters at the time. Kamichika also produced her first literary journal, the Saffron (March-August 1914), during this time period.
Affair with Ōsugi Sakae In 1914, Kamichika met anarchist
Ōsugi Sakae. The two began their affair in the spring of 1915 and by December of that same year it was well-known and unpopular within their circles of fellow radical activists. Ōsugi was married at the time to Reiko and soon began another relationship with anarcho-feminist
Itō Noe in 1916. Ōsugi stated to the three women that this unconventional relationship was an attempt to test his theory of free love, in which all sexual partners were to be allowed complete freedom in sexual matters. Ōsugi, however, soon began to favor Itō, straining the relationships between him and Kamichika, who had already attempted to break off the relationship immediately after Ōsugi had begun seeing Itō. This tension culminated on November 8, 1916, when Kamichika stabbed Ōsugi in an incident that was later called the Hayama Hikage Chaya scandal after the teahouse in
Hayama, Kanagawa where the incident took place. She was sentenced to four years in prison on March 7, 1917, but after appealing her sentence she only served two. Kamichika served this sentence in what was essentially solitary confinement. In 1919, Kamichika was released from prison with a tarnished reputation and career. Her family refused to allow her to visit them due to the disgrace she had brought them. The scandal also had significant impacts on the broader socialist movement in Japan. Leaders in the socialist movement worried that the actions of Ōsugi and Kamichika would reflect poorly on the broader socialist movement, and cause mainstream media, which was already highly-critical of the socialist movement, to portray socialists as hypersexual. Thus several prominent socialists released statements decrying the affair and criticizing Ōsugi's behavior. Additionally, the scandal led to the end of the Bluestocking magazine.
After 1919 After Kamichika was released from prison in 1919, she joined the editorial team of the
Nyonin Geijutsu. She worked in various oppositional movements throughout the 1920s, working for Japan's first literary socialist journal
The Sower (
Tane maku Hito (種蒔く人). In 1920, she married Atsushi Suzuki and had three children. She and Suzuki later created the
Fujin Bungei in 1934, a literary journal that featured women writers and questioned Japan's increasing nationalism just before
World War II broke out. == Post-war ==