The Woman Who Drinks Poison

Yoshio Tamura dreams of leaving Tokyo for a profitable canning venture in Karafuto. Before he can depart, his life contracts around hospital visits, unpaid obligations, and a young woman who refuses to remain merely his mistress. Tori wants a future she can trust; Yoshio wants freedom without surrendering his hold on her.

Moving through rented rooms, literary gatherings, a theater concert, and the streets of Tokyo, this novel follows their quarrels with unsettling closeness. A friend’s intervention promises to resolve the affair, but turns jealousy and calculation into a struggle over who will take responsibility for Tori. The gap between Yoshio’s philosophical assurances and his conduct grows harder to ignore.

First published in 1914, The Woman Who Drinks Poison is the second novel in Iwano Hōmei’s five-work cycle. It continues Development while bringing its central relationship to a new crisis. This complete English translation preserves all seventeen chapters and the embedded verse quotations, with notes on period customs, literary references, uncertain readings, and the source’s unresolved details.