Tamura Toshiko

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**Toshiko Tamura**
Tamura Toshiko
Born:	25 April 1884 Tokyo Japan
Died:	16 April 1945 Shanghai, China
Occupation:	Writer
Genres:	Novels

This is a Japanese name; the family name is Tamura.

Toshiko Tamura (田村俊子, Tamura Toshiko^?, 25 April 1884—16 April 1945) was the pen-name of a early modern feminist novelist in Showa period Japan. Her real name was Satō Toshi.

Tamura was born in the plebian Asakusa area of Tokyo, where her father was a rice broker. She studied briefly at Nihon Joshi Daigaku Japan Women's University, but left without graduating. 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 Chuō 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.