Shimeko Tanabe
| Shimeko Tanabe | |
|---|---|
 Shimeko Tanabe, before 1930.jpg Tanabe in 1930, the year of her death. | |
| Native name | 田部 シメ子 |
| Born | Shimeko Tanabe 2 December 1912 Ogōchi, Asa District, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan (present-day Ogōchi-chō, Nishi-ku, Hiroshima) |
| 💀Died | 29 November 1930 (aged 17) Koshigoe 2-chōme, Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan29 November 1930 (aged 17) |
| Cause of death | Suicide by Calmotin poisoning |
| Resting place | Kyōsen-ji, Tagata, Nishi-ku, Hiroshima |
| Other names | Atsumi Tanabe (田部あつみ, also written 田辺あつみ) |
| 🎓 Alma mater | Hiroshima Municipal Funairi High School (left) |
| 💼 Occupation | Café waitress |
| 👴 👵 Parent(s) | Shimakichi Tanabe, Shina Tanabe |
Shimeko Tanabe (田部 シメ子 Tanabe Shimeko) (December 2, 1912 - November 29, 1930), also known as Atsumi Tanabe (田部あつみ or 田辺あつみ Tanabe Atsumi), was a Japanese café waitress and one of the lovers of the novelist Osamu Dazai. On the night of November 28 to 29, 1930, she and Dazai ingested an overdose of the sedative Calmotin in a joint suicide (shinjū) attempt on the shore of Shichirigahama in Kamakura. Tanabe died and Dazai survived.
She is the model for Sono (園 Sono), the woman who dies in the suicide pact in Dazai's short story "The Flowers of Buffoonery" (Dōke no Hana, 1935). In "The Flowers of Buffoonery", Dazai writes, "With this hand, I drowned Sono in the water. With a devil's pride I wished that, even if I were to revive, Sono should die."
Early life
Tanabe was born on December 2, 1912, in Ogōchi, Asa District, Hiroshima Prefecture (present-day Ogōchi-chō, Nishi-ku, Hiroshima), the fourth daughter of Shimakichi Tanabe 田部島吉 and his wife Shina シナ. The given name Shimeko was chosen in the sense of "to end with this child" (シメ shime, "to finish"). Tanabe disliked the name and, after consulting with her elder brother, began calling herself Atsumi あつみ from an early age.
A strong student, she entered Hiroshima Municipal First Girls' High School (present-day Hiroshima Municipal Funairi High School) but withdrew during her third year. She then took work as a waitress at the Heiwa Hōmu, a large Shintenchi-district café in Hiroshima's main entertainment quarter. There she met a customer named Junzō Kōmen 高面順三, the manager of a café, and the two began living together. From around this time she gave her name as Atsumi Tanabe, written with the variant surname 田辺.u
In the summer of 1930, Tanabe traveled with Kōmen to Tokyo, where he hoped to find work as a shingeki (新劇) stage actor. When Kōmen could not find employment, Tanabe took a position to help support the household, working under the name Atsumi Tanabe as a waitress at a café called Hollywood in the Ginza district. Among the customers she met there was Osamu Dazai.
Suicide pact
On November 28, 1930, after having met Dazai on only three previous occasions, she along with Osamu bought a quantity of Calmotin and traveled to Kamakura. From late that night into the early hours of November 29, on the beach behind Koyurugi Shrine, at Cape Koyurugi on the Shichirigahama beach, the two swallowed a large dose of the drug in a joint suicide (心中) attempt. Tanabe died, while Dazai survived. According to a traditional account of her death, the name she called out at the end was not Dazai's. She was 17 years old. Her remains were interred at her family's bodaiji, Kyōsen-ji, 教専寺 in Tagata, Nishi-ku, Hiroshima.
Dazai was arrested on suspicion of aiding a suicide and questioned by the police, but he only received a suspended prosecution. In this, he benefited from two coincidences in the chain of command. The investigating detective (刑事) of Kamakura Police Station, Yoshimichi Murata 村田義道, came from Kanagi village 金木村 (present-day Kanagi, Goshogawara) and was the son of a tenant farmer of the Tsushima family. The head of the supervising Yokohama District Court, Uno Yōzaburō 宇野要三郎, was from Kuroishi, Aomori and was related by marriage to Dazai's father Tsushima Gen'emon.
References
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