Ueda Chikako (上田ちか子)
Chikako UEDA (dates of birth and death unknown) was geigi (a woman who gives fun with a song, a dance or a music instrument at a feast) and a poet at the end of the Edo period.
Her family was managing a thriving seiro (a bar and brothel of Yoshiwara red-light district), and she became a geigi herself.
A scholar of Japanese classical literature Tomoo NAGASAWA was one of her regular customers, and she learned waka (Japanese poetry) from him.
Later, when he suffered the poverty, she supported him.
She had a friendship with Rengetsu OTAGAKI through poetry, and there remains her poem in which she expressed her circumstances along with Rengetsu and Sakuragi Tayu..
Rengetsu
Although being invited by some water, a grass contents with just floating from here to there.
Chikako
Although not saying want to be invited, a tousled flower can be seen under the grass.
Sakuragi
Hoping for some water to invite, I would offer this skinny body as a floating grass.