Sayo Masuda
Masuda was born in 1925, near the town of Shiojiri in Nagano Prefecture. During her later teen years, into her early twenties, she was an onsen geisha at a hot-spring resort in Japan. After this, she became a prostitute, vigorously protesting the passage of anti-prostitution laws. She eventually got a job making soap for a Korean worker, which she held for several months. When the soap business failed, she began drinking heavily, which led to her near death from liver failure and a suicide attempt. She survived and quit drinking, and when she had sufficiently recovered, she began to look after children, eventually becoming a full-time caretaker for several years. Eventually, she was able to open her own restaurant, and ran it for several decades. As a result of heavy drinking in her twenties, she died of liver cancer on June 26th, 2008.
Masuda wrote her autobiography between the years of 1956 and 1957. She had never learned to read more than hiragana, and wrote her entire book in it. Her editors worked carefully to convert her work into the standard kanji while preserving the feeling of her original writing.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
“When I was a nursemaid at the home of the landowners, a nun who happened to pass once gave me something square and white.Timidly I licked it and discovered that it was sweet and delicious. I realize now that it must have been a sugar cube;but still, more than twenty years later, I remember clearly the joy I felt then. It's not just children; everyone seems to be deeply touched by unexpected joy brought to them by others and is unable to forget it. That child will be grown up by now, and if he hasn't forgotten me, whenever he sees a crying child he'll want to say a kind word and wipe the kid's nose. And when that kid grows up, he'll do the same. To do something kind for another is never a bad feeling; it fosters a spirit of caring for other people. And who knows,after a hundrend years, human beings may even learn to cooperate with one another...Yes, that was it: I'd try to teach children that if they felt glad when someone gave them a single piece of candy,then they in turn should give to others.”
“No matter how deep in disgrace, a human being IS human, after all.”
“What a lovely place this world would be if only people would feel affection for everyone else, and all the ugliness of the human heart were to vanish - our envy of those better off than ourselves and our scorn for those worse off.”
“Being in love isn't the only way of loving. I realized with all my being that if you loved somebody- it didn't matter who it was- and dedicated yourself to bringing joy to your loved one, you, too, would be redeemed.”
“Only when I turned thirty did I finally feel for the first time that I was free, that I could live as I liked, as an individual. It's as if at thirty, I'd been born for the first time. Until then, I was never more than someone's tool.”
“Never give birth to children thoughtlessly!'' I want to shout it out loud.That is why, stroke by faltering stroke, I've written this all down.”
“Nor was I the only one struggling.To live an ordinary life, like any ordinary person, must have been the vain dream of countless others.”
“In every human heart is a place where you put all your broken dreams. When something doesn't work out, no matter what it may be, you just have to give it up and stuff it in with your broken dreams. And make sure you keep the lid on tight.”
“When someone who's starved of love is shown something that looks like sincere affection, is it any wonder that she jumps at it and clings to it?”