Okamoto Kanoko, novelist, poet and Buddhism scholar, was born in Tokyo in 1889. Her maiden name was Onuki Kano. Her husband was Okamoto Ippei, the caricaturist, and her son, Okamoto Taro, the avant-garde painter.

In addition to music and traditional dance, Kanoko was fond of classical literature, especially Genji monogatari and Kokin-wakashu, from early childhood. She was very much influenced by her older brother who studied at the First Higher School and Tokyo University. While still a student at the Atomi Gakuen girls' high school, Kanoko called on the renowned poet, Yosano Akiko, and this encounter prompted her to start contributing tanka to the poetry magazine Myojo (Bright Star). Later, she played an active part as a key contributor to another journal, Subaru (The Pleiades). In 1910, she married Okamoto Ippei and their son Taro was born the next year.

She published the first of her five tanka anthologies, Karoki-netami, in 1912. After bringing out her fourth tanka anthology "Waga Saisyu Kasyu" (My last anthology) in 1929, she determined to become a novelist. To complete her literary studies she took her whole family to Europe. They travelled to Paris, London, Berlin and finally America, coming back to Japan in 1932.

After returning home, Kanoko was overwhelmed by her work as a researcher of Buddhism, but she found time to write Tsuru wa yamiki (1936, The Dying Crane), a novelette about the last days of the writer Akutagawa Ryunosuke, for the influential magazine Bungakukai, which gained her a foothold into the literary world.

After that, she published many more works in quick succession, such as Hahako jojo, Kingyo ryoran, and Rogisho (The Aging Geisha), but she died of a brain disorder in 1939, at the age of 49.

Kanoko stayed at an inn near Kamakura station in the summer of 1923, and it was there that she met Akutagawa Ryunosuke. This meeting became the inspiration for her novelette, Tsuru wa yamiki.