Meaning of に in もう彼女に抵抗の余地はないのでしょうか？

Question

ライトは事もなく照子の名前を入手することに成功しました。 照子も結構鋭いところを見せてくれますが、もう彼女に抵抗の余地はないのでしょうか？ せっかくの「きれいなお姉さん」なので、なんとか頑張って欲しいものです。

Context: On episode 6 of Death Note, Light is trying get information from former FBI agent 南空ナオミ about something she discovered related to the Kira case. He asks for her name giving his first, and she introduces herself as 間木照子.

Can this sentence mean: "Does it look like there's no resistance FROM/BY the woman?" instead of "Does it look like there's no resistance TO the woman?"

I thought this sentence meant that the author of the blog didn't like the character of 照子 before and know he does. I guess that was the case because after that line there's this sentence: "せっかくの「きれいなお姉さん」なので、なんとか頑張って欲しいものです。" which is clearly the author giving his opinion.

But after thinking for a bit, if 照子 was the one doing the action (resisting or not resisting to give his name to Light) it would make more sense.

Before that we have: "ライトは事もなく照子の名前を入手することに成功しました。" which states that Light got her name without any problem (resistance from her part). So it would make perfect sense if, after that, the author questions why would she give her name to someone he just met without any hesitation (Like, maybe she could've just said "I can't give you my name because it's not safe"). The answer is of course , the name 照子 is a fake one, but the author doesn't mention that as it happens in the next episode.

Is my interpretation correct? I started to think of this after reading this: https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/11021

I know I asked something similar before (Directionality of にも) but there seems to not be an online version of that dictionary anymore (明鏡) and I tried to find a definition of that usage of に in other Japanese dictionaries but to no avail. I just want to be 100% sure of this usage of the に particle.

Answer 1

Simply, this に is a location/place marker used with existence verbs like ある/いる/ない/etc, although this type of に is often better translated to English using "have".

• Cases where "に" cannot mean "at"
• What is the difference between ni and ni wa, when talking about a person?
• Parsing 彼には映画監督になるという夢があります

Therefore 彼女には抵抗の余地がない literally means "In/Around her, room for resistance does not exist", or more naturally, "There is no chance of resisting Light for her" or "She can no longer resist Light".