Tazawa Inabune (1874-1896)
Nov. 22nd, 2024 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nnozomi posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
senzenwomenTazawa Inabune was born in 1874 in Yamagata, where her father was a doctor and her mother a local businesswoman. Her birth name was Kin. She was scholarly and clever from early on, as well as very pretty. At seventeen, persuading her parents not to marry her off immediately to an adopted-husband who would carry on her father’s occupation, she moved to Tokyo to study literature and registered at the Kyoritsu Girls’ Vocational School.
In the spring of that year, 1891, she met the writer Yamada Bimyo (Taketaro), with whom she had already been corresponding. Already well known for his innovative (at the time) use of oral rather than literary language in novels, Yamada also ran a women’s literary magazine, which had brought them together when Kin submitted a poem. He and Kin quickly became involved, although she was by no means his only girlfriend. Horrified at the news they heard of their daughter’s behavior, Kin’s parents summoned her back to Yamagata, where she began writing seriously, publishing in local literary magazines. It was at this point that she began to use the pen name Inabune (sometimes read as Inafune).
In 1894 the papers reported that Yamada had been living off an Asakusa geisha, Ishii Tome. “I tried it out to use as fodder for my novels,” he excused himself, which even in that era did not go over very well. Inabune was heartbroken, but did not break off her ongoing correspondence with him. It was through his intervention that in July 1895 her writing was first published in major literary magazines (although the harsh criticism of men appearing in several of her short stories has been suggested to derive directly from her reaction to Yamada’s behavior).
At the end of 1895, Inabune and Yamada married. Thanks to Yamada’s continuing misbehavior (apart from his womanizing, he made her write to her family asking them for money) and the overbearing presences of his mother and grandmother in the same house, the marriage lasted barely three months. The newspapers did not spare Inabune their curiosity. Already ill with tuberculosis, she fled back to her family; Yamada wasted no time after their divorce in moving in a geisha as his new wife. At home in Yamagata, Inabune devoted herself to writing, producing several more and less autobiographical stories, until her death in May 1896. In keeping with the original inaccurate reports that she had committed suicide, Yamada’s reputation in the literary world was left in ruins. The journal Waseda Literature wrote of Inabune that she would have been likely to become a notable author if given another ten or twenty years of life.
Sources
Mori 1996
In the spring of that year, 1891, she met the writer Yamada Bimyo (Taketaro), with whom she had already been corresponding. Already well known for his innovative (at the time) use of oral rather than literary language in novels, Yamada also ran a women’s literary magazine, which had brought them together when Kin submitted a poem. He and Kin quickly became involved, although she was by no means his only girlfriend. Horrified at the news they heard of their daughter’s behavior, Kin’s parents summoned her back to Yamagata, where she began writing seriously, publishing in local literary magazines. It was at this point that she began to use the pen name Inabune (sometimes read as Inafune).
In 1894 the papers reported that Yamada had been living off an Asakusa geisha, Ishii Tome. “I tried it out to use as fodder for my novels,” he excused himself, which even in that era did not go over very well. Inabune was heartbroken, but did not break off her ongoing correspondence with him. It was through his intervention that in July 1895 her writing was first published in major literary magazines (although the harsh criticism of men appearing in several of her short stories has been suggested to derive directly from her reaction to Yamada’s behavior).
At the end of 1895, Inabune and Yamada married. Thanks to Yamada’s continuing misbehavior (apart from his womanizing, he made her write to her family asking them for money) and the overbearing presences of his mother and grandmother in the same house, the marriage lasted barely three months. The newspapers did not spare Inabune their curiosity. Already ill with tuberculosis, she fled back to her family; Yamada wasted no time after their divorce in moving in a geisha as his new wife. At home in Yamagata, Inabune devoted herself to writing, producing several more and less autobiographical stories, until her death in May 1896. In keeping with the original inaccurate reports that she had committed suicide, Yamada’s reputation in the literary world was left in ruins. The journal Waseda Literature wrote of Inabune that she would have been likely to become a notable author if given another ten or twenty years of life.
Sources
Mori 1996
no subject
Date: 2024-11-22 08:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-24 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-22 10:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-24 12:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-30 06:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-12-02 10:51 am (UTC)