Born in
Kyoto, Yuasa was an early supporter of the
feminist movement in late
Taishō and early Shōwa period Japan. Moving to Tokyo, she was also drawn to
leftist political movements and became involved with leading female
proletarian literature movement novelist
Chūjō Yuriko. In 1924, after Chūjō divorced her husband, the two women began to live together, and from 1927–1930, traveled together to the Soviet Union, where they studied the
Russian language and
Russian literature and developed a friendship with noted
movie director Sergei Eisenstein. Evidence suggests that the relationship between Yuasa and Chūjō was a romantic if not sexual one. While Yuasa has also been romantically linked to writer
Tamura Toshiko among others, Chūjō is said to have been the love of Yuasa's life. Yuasa was never again romantically linked to another woman after Chūjō's marriage to proletarian author and
Japan Communist Party leader
Miyamoto Kenji, although in an interview late in life Yuasa said that the word "lesbian" (rezubian/レズビアン) applied to her. After their return to Japan and Chūjō remarried, Yuasa continued with her translation work of Russian authors, especially the works of
Maxim Gorky,
Anton Chekhov and
Samuil Marshak. She is especially known for her translation of Chekhov's
The Cherry Orchard. Yuasa died in 1990, and her grave is at
Tōkei-ji, a temple in
Kamakura. ==Legacy==