“It is a terrible wrong to deprive children of their freedom and rob them of their personalities.”

— Kaneko Fumiko, The Prison Memoirs of a Japanese Woman (1991), p. 89

About Kaneko Fumiko

1903 – 1926

Japanese anarchist and writer whose prison memoirs were published after her death.

“Let your children play as they please! To play freely on this earth is the one privilege nature has given to children.”

“By nature human beings should be equal.”

“The virtue and beauty of human beings is to live naturally, ungoverned by external forces.”

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.”

“Go where he will, the wise man is at home, his hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome.”

“Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.”

“Mature manhood: that means to have rediscovered the seriousness one had as a child at play.”

“The Tao is called the Great Mother: empty yet inexhaustible, it gives birth to infinite worlds.”

“Distrust and caution are the parents of security.”