Background
Toshiko Sato was born in 1885 in Tokyo, Japan. Her father was a rice broker.
俊子 佐藤
Toshiko Sato was born in 1885 in Tokyo, Japan. 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 experiences in the theatre are illustrated in "Chooroo" (Mockery, 1912). 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 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.
(Japanese Edition)
1999(Japanese Edition )
1999