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Japanese Women Writers: Twentieth Century Short Fiction
"Here are Japanese women in infinite and fascinating variety -- ardent lovers, lonely single women, political activists, betrayed wives, loyal wives, protective mothers, embittered mothers, devoted daughters. ... a new sense of the richness of Japanese women's experience, a new appreciation for feelings too long submerged". -- The New York Times Book Review
310 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1983
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About the author
Noriko Mizuta Lippit
15 books3 followersNoriko Mizuta (水田 宗子 Mizuta Noriko, born August 19, 1937) is the chancellor of Jōsai University and Josai International University in Japan. She is a scholar of comparative literature, having trained at Tokyo Women's University and Yale University. She was awarded the Pro Cultura Hungarica prize in 2011 and the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of Hungary (civil division) in 2013.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
January 26, 2018
This is one of those books that I didn’t particularly enjoy as I read it, but, upon reflection after finishing, I appreciate more.
I like that the book defied my expectations: I had expected more “man-woman” themed stories, but instead the theme that emerged the most strongly had to do with mother-child relationships. And while in a few cases these were tender (as in “The Full Moon”), in many cases the relationships and emotions expressed are strained and unnatural seeming (particularly “Congruent Figures”). In almost every case, the mother figure in these stories is quite conflicted. In other cases (“In the Pot”), the daughter is the one who struggles to come to terms with the relationship.
On the whole, thought provoking and unusual.
Some fragmentary notes taken from the Intro:
Dual structure of Japanese lit, divided between kanbun (Chinese writings) and kana writings, is clearly based on the division between the literature of men and that of women.
Recognition of female-school lit as a separate category of writing …created a situation quite different from that in the West. Classical period – educated woen wrote poetries, diaries and confessional memoirs – but during medieval and Edo periods, the social system, shaped by neo-Confucianism, confined women absolutely to the home. Samurai class established supremacy based on “masculine” principles – classical female-style lit and expression virtually vanished and was not revived until the national lit movement in the late Edo period. Female-school lit revived in Meiji (1868-1912) and Taisho (1912-26) periods.
Modern Japanese women writers “have been placed in their own group isolated from the main activities of the literary world, and their works have been treated as belonging to a separate category not always regarded as an integral part of Japanese literary development.”
Brief summaries of the individual stories:
The Family of Koiwai – Miyamoto Yuriko (1938) - Unrelentingly grim account of a very poor family. Story peters out with no resolution. Just vignettes of a family on the very brink of survival. Influence of Communist realism in writing.
The Full Moon – Nogami Yaeko (1942) – A well-do-to woman is summoned home to attend her dying mother, who rallies. She returns home, but then her mother takes a turn for the worse, the daughter returns, but it is too late and she arrives not long after her mother dies. Reflections on the mother-daughter relationship. She attends the funeral, brings back her mother’s funeral urn of bones and takes it to her summer villa, where she buries the urn in a fitting spot.
Blind Chinese Soldiers – Hirabayashi Taiko (1946) – A memory from childhood of seeing hundreds of blind Chinese captured soldiers being herded from a transport train. A condemnation/critique of Japan’s treatment of the Chinese during the war.
Narcissus ¬– Hayashi Fumiko (1949) – Really depressing story of a mother and son who bicker endlessly and don’t like each other. Eventually, they split up and all the mother feels is relief. There is no “maternal” or family feeling in this take. It’s hard to take. As usual, Hayashi’s characters are on the fringes of society, just getting by.
Residues of Squalor – Ota Yoko (1954) – Life in ruins of Hiroshima, post-bomb. A family lives in a horrid slug-infested crumbling house. The narrator has come from another place and is revisiting her past as she visits her relatives. A broad condemnation of the holocaust that occurred there. Very striking and disconcerting imagery, including a battle with slugs, who thrive in the rainy, muddy, damp area and come out at night and crawl up the mosquito netting. The woman’s mother and cousin pick up the slugs and put them in jars of salt water, but the woman can’t stop imagining that the slugs are reincarnated souls of those who perished in the nuclear holocaust. For me one the most memorable and unsettling of the stories.
Memeory of a Night – Sata Ineko (1955) - A woman asks to stay with a family she had stayed with before she was driven out of the Communist party. (The family are party members.) Awkwardness ensues.
Love in Two Lives – The Remnant – Enchi Fumiko (1958) - A young widowed woman acts as a scribe for an aged, sick professor who once molested her. He is now a pitiful object. She transcribes a strange tale that takes hold of her imagination. On her way home, she shares an umbrella with a man who makes a pass at her. Panicked, she thinks that he is someone from the gruesome tale and she runs away.
Ants Swarm - Kono Taeko (1964) – Vignettes from a sado-masochist marriage. Very dark and rather disturbing. The woman thinks she is pregnant but isn’t. She doesn’t want to have children and thought her husband didn’t, but then it turns out the husband does. She wrestles with feelings of resentment and confusion.
To Stab – Uno Chiyo (1966) - A successful business women whose husband keeps a mistress feels compelled to undertake several expensive and unsuccessful ventures, eventually coming to ruin. Like the scorpion hitching a ride across the river in the fable, she can’t help herself and acts not in accordance with self-preservation, but according to her true nature.
Facing the Hills They Stand – Tomioka Taeko (1970) – A sordid and strangely inert saga of a family on the fringes of society, afflicted by physical and mental problems, gambling compulsions, and other ills. (This was probably my least favorite tale in the book. The characters, prose, and plot were all irritating.)
Congruent Figures – Takahasi Takako (1971) - A mother receives a letter from her estranged daughter, who has gotten married and had a child. The mother reflects on her daughter, and what drove them apart: the mother’s feeling that the daughter was just like her in many uncanny ways, even down to the smallest gesture or phrase, and that she is being superceded by her daughter. Rather than feeling gratified that something lives on of her through her daughter and grandchild, she is appalled that “blood” is carried down generation to generation. She reflects "In this way, from next to next, I will continue to expand limitlessly into the dark space of the future. The thought gave me an ominous feeling.” The daughter arrives and it seems she herself has a daughter. Last line: “’You too bore a girl,’” I said, smiling thinly. I checked my impulse to say that it will begin with you now.” Again, this story inverts what are considered “normal” maternal feelings and posits an unsavory but plausible alternative.
The Smile of a Mountain Witch – Ohba Minako (1976) - The legend of “mountain witches” is the basis for this fanciful and oddly tender tale, in which a mountain witch, who like all her kind can read other people’s minds and emotional states, is raised as a human and marries a human, but longs for the freedom to be herself. At the end of her life, however, she reflects on the character of her children and spouse and feels contentment. Things were as she had wished them to be.
Yellow Sand – Hayashi Kyoko (1977) – Reflections on a childhood spent in China, activated by the fine yellow sand that is blown all the way from China to Japan. She recalls an outcast Japanese prostitute she formed a strange bond with. The prostitute kills herself just as the girl’s family is going to be evacuated at the start of the war. In other words, the adult narrator speculates on something that profoundly affected her as a young child but which, as a child, she could not comprehend fully.
In the Pot – Murata Kiyoko (1987) – A group of four cousins (two boys, two girls) are sent to stay with their grandmother in the country while their parents travel to Hawaii to visit a sick relative, the younger brother of the grandmother. Many interesting events occur, told through the eyes of the oldest girl (this is done, I might add, quite well). It’s the longest of the stories, running over 40 pages, and has, to me, the most convincing characters. The four children and the grandmother are all well-drawn and appealing. The plot hinges on some stories about the grandmother’s past that she tells them, and which disturb the girl and her older cousin very much, concerning their parentage. (The girl fears, based on what her grandmother says about how she looks just like someone – but not her mother - that she is not actually the daughter of her parents but of another family member who died shortly after childbirth.) But then it seems that the grandmother’s memory is so unreliable that it isn’t at all clear whether what she says can be trusted. In the end, the girl is left with no good way of becoming certain of what is true.
Read for the "Reading Genres" book club meeting on books by non-European/non-American women writers, held in May 2017
I like that the book defied my expectations: I had expected more “man-woman” themed stories, but instead the theme that emerged the most strongly had to do with mother-child relationships. And while in a few cases these were tender (as in “The Full Moon”), in many cases the relationships and emotions expressed are strained and unnatural seeming (particularly “Congruent Figures”). In almost every case, the mother figure in these stories is quite conflicted. In other cases (“In the Pot”), the daughter is the one who struggles to come to terms with the relationship.
On the whole, thought provoking and unusual.
Some fragmentary notes taken from the Intro:
Dual structure of Japanese lit, divided between kanbun (Chinese writings) and kana writings, is clearly based on the division between the literature of men and that of women.
Recognition of female-school lit as a separate category of writing …created a situation quite different from that in the West. Classical period – educated woen wrote poetries, diaries and confessional memoirs – but during medieval and Edo periods, the social system, shaped by neo-Confucianism, confined women absolutely to the home. Samurai class established supremacy based on “masculine” principles – classical female-style lit and expression virtually vanished and was not revived until the national lit movement in the late Edo period. Female-school lit revived in Meiji (1868-1912) and Taisho (1912-26) periods.
Modern Japanese women writers “have been placed in their own group isolated from the main activities of the literary world, and their works have been treated as belonging to a separate category not always regarded as an integral part of Japanese literary development.”
Brief summaries of the individual stories:
The Family of Koiwai – Miyamoto Yuriko (1938) - Unrelentingly grim account of a very poor family. Story peters out with no resolution. Just vignettes of a family on the very brink of survival. Influence of Communist realism in writing.
The Full Moon – Nogami Yaeko (1942) – A well-do-to woman is summoned home to attend her dying mother, who rallies. She returns home, but then her mother takes a turn for the worse, the daughter returns, but it is too late and she arrives not long after her mother dies. Reflections on the mother-daughter relationship. She attends the funeral, brings back her mother’s funeral urn of bones and takes it to her summer villa, where she buries the urn in a fitting spot.
Blind Chinese Soldiers – Hirabayashi Taiko (1946) – A memory from childhood of seeing hundreds of blind Chinese captured soldiers being herded from a transport train. A condemnation/critique of Japan’s treatment of the Chinese during the war.
Narcissus ¬– Hayashi Fumiko (1949) – Really depressing story of a mother and son who bicker endlessly and don’t like each other. Eventually, they split up and all the mother feels is relief. There is no “maternal” or family feeling in this take. It’s hard to take. As usual, Hayashi’s characters are on the fringes of society, just getting by.
Residues of Squalor – Ota Yoko (1954) – Life in ruins of Hiroshima, post-bomb. A family lives in a horrid slug-infested crumbling house. The narrator has come from another place and is revisiting her past as she visits her relatives. A broad condemnation of the holocaust that occurred there. Very striking and disconcerting imagery, including a battle with slugs, who thrive in the rainy, muddy, damp area and come out at night and crawl up the mosquito netting. The woman’s mother and cousin pick up the slugs and put them in jars of salt water, but the woman can’t stop imagining that the slugs are reincarnated souls of those who perished in the nuclear holocaust. For me one the most memorable and unsettling of the stories.
Memeory of a Night – Sata Ineko (1955) - A woman asks to stay with a family she had stayed with before she was driven out of the Communist party. (The family are party members.) Awkwardness ensues.
Love in Two Lives – The Remnant – Enchi Fumiko (1958) - A young widowed woman acts as a scribe for an aged, sick professor who once molested her. He is now a pitiful object. She transcribes a strange tale that takes hold of her imagination. On her way home, she shares an umbrella with a man who makes a pass at her. Panicked, she thinks that he is someone from the gruesome tale and she runs away.
Ants Swarm - Kono Taeko (1964) – Vignettes from a sado-masochist marriage. Very dark and rather disturbing. The woman thinks she is pregnant but isn’t. She doesn’t want to have children and thought her husband didn’t, but then it turns out the husband does. She wrestles with feelings of resentment and confusion.
To Stab – Uno Chiyo (1966) - A successful business women whose husband keeps a mistress feels compelled to undertake several expensive and unsuccessful ventures, eventually coming to ruin. Like the scorpion hitching a ride across the river in the fable, she can’t help herself and acts not in accordance with self-preservation, but according to her true nature.
Facing the Hills They Stand – Tomioka Taeko (1970) – A sordid and strangely inert saga of a family on the fringes of society, afflicted by physical and mental problems, gambling compulsions, and other ills. (This was probably my least favorite tale in the book. The characters, prose, and plot were all irritating.)
Congruent Figures – Takahasi Takako (1971) - A mother receives a letter from her estranged daughter, who has gotten married and had a child. The mother reflects on her daughter, and what drove them apart: the mother’s feeling that the daughter was just like her in many uncanny ways, even down to the smallest gesture or phrase, and that she is being superceded by her daughter. Rather than feeling gratified that something lives on of her through her daughter and grandchild, she is appalled that “blood” is carried down generation to generation. She reflects "In this way, from next to next, I will continue to expand limitlessly into the dark space of the future. The thought gave me an ominous feeling.” The daughter arrives and it seems she herself has a daughter. Last line: “’You too bore a girl,’” I said, smiling thinly. I checked my impulse to say that it will begin with you now.” Again, this story inverts what are considered “normal” maternal feelings and posits an unsavory but plausible alternative.
The Smile of a Mountain Witch – Ohba Minako (1976) - The legend of “mountain witches” is the basis for this fanciful and oddly tender tale, in which a mountain witch, who like all her kind can read other people’s minds and emotional states, is raised as a human and marries a human, but longs for the freedom to be herself. At the end of her life, however, she reflects on the character of her children and spouse and feels contentment. Things were as she had wished them to be.
Yellow Sand – Hayashi Kyoko (1977) – Reflections on a childhood spent in China, activated by the fine yellow sand that is blown all the way from China to Japan. She recalls an outcast Japanese prostitute she formed a strange bond with. The prostitute kills herself just as the girl’s family is going to be evacuated at the start of the war. In other words, the adult narrator speculates on something that profoundly affected her as a young child but which, as a child, she could not comprehend fully.
In the Pot – Murata Kiyoko (1987) – A group of four cousins (two boys, two girls) are sent to stay with their grandmother in the country while their parents travel to Hawaii to visit a sick relative, the younger brother of the grandmother. Many interesting events occur, told through the eyes of the oldest girl (this is done, I might add, quite well). It’s the longest of the stories, running over 40 pages, and has, to me, the most convincing characters. The four children and the grandmother are all well-drawn and appealing. The plot hinges on some stories about the grandmother’s past that she tells them, and which disturb the girl and her older cousin very much, concerning their parentage. (The girl fears, based on what her grandmother says about how she looks just like someone – but not her mother - that she is not actually the daughter of her parents but of another family member who died shortly after childbirth.) But then it seems that the grandmother’s memory is so unreliable that it isn’t at all clear whether what she says can be trusted. In the end, the girl is left with no good way of becoming certain of what is true.
Read for the "Reading Genres" book club meeting on books by non-European/non-American women writers, held in May 2017
shelved
January 10, 2026Just started this collection.
The introduction is very good in placing the history of literature by women in, and key within, the broad scope of Japanese literary history.
The introduction is very good in placing the history of literature by women in, and key within, the broad scope of Japanese literary history.
December 25, 2025
“Yet I did think about the gorgeous woman which had been crushed inside of me. If given a chance it could have bloomed into a large flower spreading wide its pink petals and wafting around a sweet fragrance. Such a flower which could not bloom existed inside of me. It existed inside of me without shrinking or withering, no, containing a still richer fragrance precisely because it could not bloom fully.”
.
There is something about the quality of this writing that I find inherently really difficult to describe. Like the smell of autumn, or the particular light of a winters sunset that breaks through the low clouds. It is a quality I find more in Japanese writing than I do in other forms of literature. A sense of longing or nostalgia.
.
All of these stories, some stronger than others, showcase writing by women authors little known outside of Japan. With it being 20th century the war lingers at the forefront or lurks in the background. Some aspect of the war in a way runs through all of these stories. Yoko’s “residues of squalor” a family left homeless after the atomic bombing in Hiroshima is left in a rundown quickly made home on an older army camp. Infested with slugs the family comes to terms with what has happened. A particularly deep and meaningful stories.
.
Others are perhaps less serious not no less meaningful. One or two are very strange and some didn’t particularly engage me. A lot of the authors had connections with communism or the anarchist movement which I found really interesting.
.
The stories of these women could make a separate book and I feel lucky that my local library has a copy. Sadly, I’d imagine it might be difficult or expensive to obtain, rather more people should be made aware of what pioneers these women were for not only Japanese women literature, but literature as a whole.
.
There is something about the quality of this writing that I find inherently really difficult to describe. Like the smell of autumn, or the particular light of a winters sunset that breaks through the low clouds. It is a quality I find more in Japanese writing than I do in other forms of literature. A sense of longing or nostalgia.
.
All of these stories, some stronger than others, showcase writing by women authors little known outside of Japan. With it being 20th century the war lingers at the forefront or lurks in the background. Some aspect of the war in a way runs through all of these stories. Yoko’s “residues of squalor” a family left homeless after the atomic bombing in Hiroshima is left in a rundown quickly made home on an older army camp. Infested with slugs the family comes to terms with what has happened. A particularly deep and meaningful stories.
.
Others are perhaps less serious not no less meaningful. One or two are very strange and some didn’t particularly engage me. A lot of the authors had connections with communism or the anarchist movement which I found really interesting.
.
The stories of these women could make a separate book and I feel lucky that my local library has a copy. Sadly, I’d imagine it might be difficult or expensive to obtain, rather more people should be made aware of what pioneers these women were for not only Japanese women literature, but literature as a whole.
January 4, 2023
although my overall rating for this is 3 stars, some stories (ants swarm, congruent figures, and in the pot) were just so gorgeous I can’t not mention them. 5 stars on all of them.
I learned more about japanese history and culture through this book as well, which was really interesting. as someone who loves japanese lit, I’m always looking for more opportunities to learn about the historical and cultural backgrounds of the authors
I learned more about japanese history and culture through this book as well, which was really interesting. as someone who loves japanese lit, I’m always looking for more opportunities to learn about the historical and cultural backgrounds of the authors
June 19, 2025
I struggled to finish this but I'm so glad that I did, as the final story 'In the Pot' by Kiyoko Murata ended up being my favourite. (I bought it in Japanese to struggle through). The preface situates the history of women writers in Japan in such a way that the repetition of setting and theme was actually enjoyable. I felt many stories were masterful, even if I can't say I 'enjoyed' reading them.
December 3, 2023
I read the story Congruent Figures in concert with my Goodreads friend M who is taking a course on women, love, etc in Japan.
In 25 pages Takahashi provides many textured descriptions of a number of daily life situations over the course of a number of years in which the mother observes and/or interacts with her daughter. Thus, the reader gains a thorough understanding of how and why the mother has come to feel the way she does about her offspring.
I have two modest criticisms. First, after a number of such examples the narrative gets to be redundant. Second, as is typically the case with a Japanese short story there is no explanation for the origins of the mother’s feelings. Ie, was there something about her own upbringing which predisposed her to react this way to her daughter?
Overall though, Congruent is quite engaging….so much so that it could make for a great full length novel.
In 25 pages Takahashi provides many textured descriptions of a number of daily life situations over the course of a number of years in which the mother observes and/or interacts with her daughter. Thus, the reader gains a thorough understanding of how and why the mother has come to feel the way she does about her offspring.
I have two modest criticisms. First, after a number of such examples the narrative gets to be redundant. Second, as is typically the case with a Japanese short story there is no explanation for the origins of the mother’s feelings. Ie, was there something about her own upbringing which predisposed her to react this way to her daughter?
Overall though, Congruent is quite engaging….so much so that it could make for a great full length novel.
May 27, 2025
“Residues of squalor” by ota yoko is my favorite from this collection
November 29, 2010
I surprisingly enjoyed this book very much. I do feel that some of the stories were less interesting and riveting as others. This book started off strong, in the middle it petered out a tad but then finished strong with a collection of 3 amazing stories about family. WIth all their stories taking place in Japan but in varying time periods it was interesting to see how Japan changes between the two times.
July 1, 2018
Interesting.
August 7, 2012
An interesting and varied collection of writing by female Japanese authors.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews