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Early life
'Note: This section is copy-and-pasted from the original article. Additions will be in bold, and a new source from Recreating Japanese women will be added.'

Yosano was born into a prosperous merchant family in Sakai, near Osaka. From the age of 11, she was the family member most responsible for running the family business, which produced and sold youkan, a type of confection. From early childhood, she was fond of reading literary works, and read widely in her father's extensive library. As a high school student, she began to subscribe to the poetry magazine Myōjō (Bright Star), of which she became a prominent contributor. Myōjō's editor, Tekkan Yosano, taught her tanka poetry, having met her on visits to Osaka and Sakai to deliver lectures and teach in workshops.

Although Tekkan had a common-law wife, he eventually separated from her after falling in love with Yosano. The two poets started a new life together in the suburb of Tokyo and were married in 1901. The couple had two sons, Hikaru and Shigeru. Despite separating from his first wife, Tekkan remained actively involved with her.

Feminist perspective
Yosano Akiko frequently wrote for the all-women literary magazine Seitō (Bluestocking), as well as other publications. Her opinions were rooted in the concept of equally partaking in child rearing, financial independence, and social responsibility.

Yosano Akiko on financial independence
Yosano Akiko disagreed with the concept of mothers seeking financial independence through the help of the government, claiming that dependence on the state and dependence on men are one and the same. In her essay titled "Woman's Complete Independence," or Joshi no tettei shita dokuritsu (女性の徹底した独立), she says:

''Even if the male has this kind of economic guarantee, if the woman still lacks it, then she should avoid marriage and childbirth. If a woman depends on her man's finances for marriage and childbirth, even if there is a romantic relationship between them, then the woman is economically dependent on him and becomes the man's slave, or otherwise she is a thief who preys on the fruits of the man's labor.''

This viewpoint was diametrically opposed to many Japanese feminists' shared opinion at the time that the government should financially support mothers, including one of the five founders of Seitō, Raichō Hiratsuka. Raichō criticized this, saying that most women cannot realistically live without financial assistance.

Yosano Akiko on motherhood
Despite giving birth to thirteen children in her lifetime, Yosano stated frequently that she did not consider the act of giving birth to be the main part of her identity. She also expressed worry that fully equating the identity of womanhood with motherhood prioritizes motherhood over the other aspects of a person.

I believe that making motherhood absolute and giving supremacy to motherhood, as Ellen Key does, among all the innumerable hopes and desires that arise as women undulate on the surface of life, serves to keep women entrapped in the old unrealistic way of thinking that gives a ranking to the innumerable desires and roles which should have equal value for the individual.

This was written in response to Swedish feminist Ellen Key and Leo Tolstoy in her Taiyō magazine column, "One Woman's Notebook," in January 1915. Her main assertion is that women could accept roles as mothers, but exemplified more than that role: as friends, as wives, as Japanese citizens, and as members of the world.