Chika Sagawa was born Kawasaki Aiko in 1911, and was raised in Hokkaido, Japan. Encouraged by her brother, Kawasaki Noboru, himself a poet and editor, she moved to Tokyo at the age of 17 to write. There she joined the literary community of Kitasono Katue, the Arcueil Club, inspired by Dada and Surrealist poetry and became an influential force in the group; she is often called the first female Japanese modernist poet. She died of stomach cancer at the young age of 25.
Her first published works were a considerable number of translations of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, among others. While her own poetry was never collected during her short life, her complete works, Sagawa Chika Zenshishû, were released in 1983.
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