Ishigaki Rin (1920-2004), one of Japan's leading modern poets, was born in Tokyo and lived there most of her life. A serious writer from her mid-teens, she went to work at a major bank at the age of 14 in order to finance her writing activities. After the destruction of her family home in one of the the Tokyo firebombings of 1945, she continued to work at the bank and became the sole support of her six-person family), while writing prolifically. She published four volumes of poetry between 1959 and 1984, and her poems on war, work, women, and the quest for individual liberation, made her nationally famous. She remains one of Japan's most popular poets.