Toshiko Tamura

Infobox Writer
name = Toshiko Tamura


caption = Tamura Toshiko
birthdate = birth date|1884|4|25|df=y
birthplace = Tokyo Japan
deathdate = death date and age|1945|4|16|1884|4|25|df=y
deathplace = Shanghai, China
occupation = Writer
genre = Novels
movement =
notableworks =
influences =
influenced = nihongo|Toshiko Tamura|田村俊子|Tamura Toshiko|extra=25 April 1884—16 April 1945 was the pen-name of an early modern feminist novelist in Showa period Japan. Her real name was nihongo|Toshi Satō|佐藤とし|"Satō 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 Kōda 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 "Chūō Kōrōn" and "Shincho".

In 1918, she left her husband Tamura Shogyo to follower 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.

External links

* [http://www.aozora.gr.jp/index_pages/person655.html e-texts of works] at Aozora Bunko jp icon

References

* Setouchi, Harumi. "Tamura Toshiko". Kodansha. (1993). ISBN 4061962523. jp icon
* Fowler, Edward. "Tamura Toshiko". "The Modern Murasaki" Ed. Rebecca Copeland and Melek Ortabasi. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. 339-347.