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Why a Good Man Is Hard to Find in Meiji Fiction: Tamura Toshiko’s Akirame (Resignation)

Tamura Toshiko (1884–1945) has attracted increased attention since her complete works were published in the late 1980s, and Akirame (Resignation, 1911), the novel that brought her to the attention of the Japanese reading public, has been the object of a number of critical essays in the new millennium.1 It is now widely considered a pivotal novel in the development of modern Japanese women’s literature. The reasons for its stature are numerous, but I will highlight three: it is an early example of a colloquial writing style (genbun itchi) developed by a woman writer; it is a persuasive and probing novel of female self-fashioning; and it is an important moment in the modern novelistic lineage of same-sex love. Nonetheless, Akirame has also been haunted by a persistent criticism that it lacks unity and has tended to induce critics to think in dichotomies about its fictional world. Tamura is probably responsible for some of this, since the “resignation” signaled by the novel’s title encourages readers to make certain assumptions about it that are at odds with the positive portrait of its protagonist. I propose here to reread Akirame as a novel that explores what I will call a geography of patriarchy, and that thematizes its heroine’s search for a female homosocial space. My reading will also demonstrate the shared terrain between Tamura’s novel and the wider context of its publication, especially the emergence of the female literary group Seitō (Bluestockings) at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. Akirame can also shed light on present-day debates about the relationship between feminism and queer theory. The best way to rethink Tamura’s novel is to start with its publication and reception, so as to understand the reasons for dichotomous approaches to it.