Sakami Sanji

**Sakami Sanji** [衫字・坂糸, 1 April 1913 - 30 December 1991) was a Kantonese author, playwright, essayist, and diarist. Her works are notable for their candid depictions of life in early 20th-century Kaimon, especially among *seiryō*, prostitutes, theatre actors, gamblers, and other denizens of the city's lively red-light districts. Along with her contemporary Koe Bōken, she is considered one of the most important female writers of the 20th century, and was a famous figurehead of the literary feminist movement in Kanton.

## Biography

Sakami was born in Kaimon's eastern district on 1 April 1913. His father, a well-known local scholar, bureaucrat and business, was 28, and his mother was 19. Sakami had three brothers and one sister, with whom she was proportedly very close. When a fourth son was born in 1916, Sakami was sent at the age of three to live with his mother's family. Sakami returned to live with her parents in 1920, when she began elementary school.

In 1928, Sakami attended a private English-language school in Kaimon's northern sector. In 1929, she fell quite seriously ill and spent several months in a local hospital, where she began earnestly studying Chinese classical poetry and the art of the *napa*. In February of the following year, Sakami made her first of many visits to the nearby red-light district Kabanko, which was the largest and most well-known in Kaimon. The same year, Sakami graduated from high school and failed the entrance exam for university. With her mother and sister she visited Shanghai, where her father was working for a shipping company, and gained an even more intense fascination with Chinese literature. She returned to Kanton that autumn and promptly enrolled in a linguistics school in Kaimon where she began teaching Kantonese to Chinese and Korean immigrants.

In 1933, Sakami began writing short stories and submitted a number of her works to literary magazines under the male pseudonym Saka Mijō (which, cleverly, was almost homophonous with Sakami-jō, or "Miss Sakami"). Her debut novel, *Mother Fox*, was also released under the name Saka Mijō, although later editions changed it to Sakami Sanji. Her true identity was revealed in an interview with the literary magazine Shishinnen in 1939.

Sakami's ambition and drive eventually paid off when she was featured in an editor's article on the Best Upcoming Young Writers of 1934. In 1935, she got a job briefly as a newspaper reporter and later began formally studying English. 1937 brough the publication of her first novel, which met critical acclaim. After visiting England in 1942 Sakami wrote in her diary:

> The English are so exuberant. They don't react to poetry in the same way as the Kantonese do. We are inclined to keep our true reactions concealed for fear of offense, and praise cautiously the merit of a writer's metaphor or adjectives. But at English poetry recitals they will stand up and clap. I once heard people whistling in appreciation. Perhaps I shall start whistling!
>
>

Sakami stayed in England for four years and eventually married a professor of English literature named Samuel Warwick; Sakami took his surname, although continued to write under the name Sanji. They moved back to Kanton in 1947, having had two children together. Upon arriving back in her homeland Sakami insisted on continuing her writing career despite the demands of motherhood, and published five more novels between 1948 and 1959. She also became a teacher of Chinese literature at a school in Kaimon, while her husband worked as an English tutor. In 1960 Sakami, with the assistance of her husband, published her first English-language essay, which discussed Kantonese society's narrow view of women as artists and creatives. It was translated into Kantonese soon after its release and became incredibly popular.

During her twilight years she travelled back to England, staying in the East End of London from 1978 until 1980. Sakami remarked in her diary how fascinating she found the English nightlife scene to be, although she herself was 'a little too old to be participating wholeheartedly'. Sakami died in 1991 in Kaimon, ten years after her husband's death, from natural causes.

## Major works

The majority of Sakami Sanji's novels and essays have been translated in Chinese, English and Japanese. Her writing is critically acclaimed in her home country; she won the Kanton National Award for Excellence and Contribution to Literature posthumously in 1994.

* *Mother Fox* (こまい・あっこう, *Komai Akkō*, 1937)
* *Kabanko Central Playhouse* (かばんこ档の闵含, *Kabanko no Danno Minban*, 1939)
* *Tales of a Streetwalker* (片超美の败, *Taichōme no Boku*, 1946)
* *Lipstick Stain* (口緋の煤げ, *Subin no Susuge*, 1947)
* *Summer Party / Summer Festival* (沧の萦, *Natsu no Machi*, 1951)
* *Love and Hate* (愛よ悪い, *Aiyo Warui,* 1955)
* *A Strange Girl from A Remote City* (てんぴ閌のいっぽい美, *Tenpi Kagi no Ippoi Me*, 1957)
* Her own diaries, three in total, mostly detailing her time spent in post-war England and published in the late 1960s