Rin Ishigaki Comments

Ishigaki Rin (born in Akasaka, Tokyo, on February 21,1920 – she died December 26,2004) was a Japanese poet, most famous for her poem 'Nameplate'. After she finished junior high school in 1934, she went to work for Industrial Bank of Japan (her income sustained her aging family through World War II): she never married.

She was known as the bank clerk poet because all of her writing was done on the side of her job as a clerk, and her work frequently appeared in her employer's newsletter. Like her friend and contemporary Ibaragi Noriko, she was openly critical of environmental devastation, war, and nuclear power. Some of her poems are used in Japanese language textbooks, and she is therefore one of the best-known contemporary poets in Japan.