Occupation Writer Name Toshiko Tamura | Genre Novels Role Novelist | |
Born 25 April 1884
Tokyo Japan ( 1884-04-25 ) Died April 1945, Shanghai, China | ||
Toshiko Tamura (田村 俊子, Tamura Toshiko, 25 April 1884 – 16 April 1945) was the pen-name of an early modern feminist novelist in Showa period Japan. Her real name was Toshi Sato (佐藤 とし, Sato Toshi).
Biography
Tamura was born in the plebeian Asakusa district of Tokyo, where her father was a rice broker. At the age of seventeen she entered the literature faculty of Nihon Joshi Daigaku Japan Women's University. However, the long commute by foot, from her home affected her health and forced her to withdraw after only a single term. She began her writing career as a disciple of Koda Rohan, but later turned to Okamoto Kido for advice, and briefly flirted with a career as a stage actress. Her novel Akirame ("Resignation", 1911) won the Osaka Asahi Shimbun literary prize. She followed this with Miira no kuchibeni ("Lip Rouge on a Mummy", 1913), and Onna Sakusha ("Woman Writer", 1913). She became a best-selling writer, and contributed numerous works to such mainstream literary magazines as Chuo Koron and Shincho.
In 1918, she left her husband Tamura Shogyo to follow her lover, Asahi Shimbun journalist Suzuki Etsu, to Vancouver, in Canada, where she lived until 1936. On her return to Japan, she had an affair with leftist Kubokawa Tsurujiro.
In 1942, she moved to Shanghai, China, then under Japanese occupation, where she edited a Chinese literary magazine Nu-Sheng. She died of a brain hemorrhage in Shanghai in 1945, and her grave is at the temple of Tokei-ji in Kamakura.
After her death, her royalties were used to establish a literary prize for women writers.