Tama Morita

Tama Morita
Tama Morita
	Hokkaidō, Japan
Died	31 October 1970 (aged 75); Tokyo, Japan
Occupation	Writer
Genre	Essays

Tama Morita (森田たま, Morita Tama, 19 December 1894 - 31 October 1970) was a

essayist whose books were quite popular in Japan around World War II. She later served as a member of the House of Councillors

in 1962.

Early life

Morita Tama was born in

literary journal Shojo Sekai, which was well received, and the same year she married and moved with her husband to Tokyo

.

Career

In 1913, she became a student of the famous writer

Morita Sohei. With his assistance, her article Katase made (“To Katase”) appeared in the literary journal Shinseiki in September 1913. However, her affairs with Morita Sohei did not go well, and her personal life was further complicated by her strained relations with her husband. In 1914, she attempted suicide at the temple of Nanko-in, in Chigasaki

.

In 1916, she met another man named Morita, this time Keio University student Morita Shichiro. She divorced her husband and married him, and decided to stop writing. In 1923, after the Great Kantō earthquake, she moved to Osaka with her husband, son and daughter. They moved back to Tokyo briefly in 1925 to start a bookstore, but when it went bankrupt, they returned to Osaka.

In 1932, her former mentor Morita Sohei visited Osaka, and she wrote Kimono Ko-shoku in one day. This story appeared in

Chūōkōron

(Central Review), and marked her return to the literary world.

She moved back to Tokyo in 1933, living first in

Shibuya, then in Ushigome. In 1939, under the sponsorship of Chūōkōron, she traveled to Shanghai, Nanjing, and Hankou in Japanese-occupied China to interview troops from the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy. In 1941, she returned to Hokkaidō to accept a teaching post at Sapporo University, which had the added advantage of safety in its distance from wartime Tokyo. In March 1943, the Imperial Japanese Navy asked that she make a visit to Japanese occupied Southeast Asia, however, she cut the tour short and returned to Japan in November. She confided to her Navy mentor about her strong desire to see that the war came to a speedy end, and her worries about her son, who had just received his conscription

notice.

In 1944, she moved to

International PEN meeting in Amsterdam

.

After her return, she became involved in politics, and joined the

Japanese Diet in 1962. She concentrated on educational issues, especially pertaining to the Japanese language

.