Born in Tokyo to privileged parents, she was aware at an early age of the differences between her own circumstances and those of the sharecroppers who worked her family's land. While still in her teens and a student at Japan Women’s University, she published a prize winning short story, Mazushiki hitobito no mure (A Crowd of Poor People, 1916) that spoke to these issues.
Leaving the university without graduating, she travelled to the United States, where she studied at Columbia University and met her first husband. Her semiautobiographical novel Nobuko relates the failure of this marriage, her travels abroad, and finding independence as a single woman.
She spent a number of years in Europe and the Soviet Union before returning to Japan and marrying Japanese Communist Party leader Miyamoto Kenji. She was an prominent participant in Japan's Proletarian Literature movement.
Works include: