非色

by Sawako Ariyoshi

Paperback Bunko

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Born in Wakayama City and a graduate of Tokyo Women's Christian College, Sawako Ariyoshi spent part of her childhood in Java. A prolific novelist, she dramatises significant issues in her fiction such as the suffering of the elderly, the effects of pollution on the environment, and the effects of social and political change on Japanese domestic life and values, especially on the lives of women. Her novel The Twilight Years depicts the life of a working woman who is caring for her elderly, dying father-in-law. Among Ariyoshi's other novels is The River Ki, an insightful portrait of the lives of three rural women: a mother, daughter, and granddaughter. Her novel The Doctor's Wife, a historical novel dramatising the roles of nineteenth-century Japanese women as it chronicles the experience of a pioneer doctor with breast cancer surgery, has identified her as one of the finest postwar Japanese women writers. The Doctor's Wife (1966) is considered as her best novel. Starting in 1949, Ariyoshi studied literature and theatre at the Tokyo Women's Christian College until she graduated in 1952. In 1959 she spent a year at the Sarah Lawrence College in New York. She then worked with a publishing company and also wrote for journals, joined a dance troupe, and wrote short stories and scripts for various media. She travelled extensively, getting material for her serialized novels of domestic life, mostly dealing with social issues. Recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship in 1959, Ariyoshi had received some Japanese literary awards and was at the height of her career when she died quietly in her sleep.

See Wikipedia

Reviews

[Kyoko · Rating 5 out of 5]

とても面白くて一気読み。
同じ「アメリカ人と結婚した日本人女性」と言いいながら、いろんな人生がある。その人生の様々をニュアンスたっぷりで書ききっていて、しびれた。

[Keiko SHIKITA Yasushima · Rating 5 out of 5]

ついさっき読み終えて、衝撃を受けている。戦争花嫁が受けてきた差別や肌の色で虐められる子どもの姿も衝撃的だが、希望を抱いて渡ったアメリカでの厳しい生活や白人の中にも存在するヒエラルキーを見事に描いている。北欧系の出自や外見を持つ白人が崇められ、イタリア系やユダヤ系は蔑まれ、中でもプエルトリコ人はその最下層と位置付けられる。黒人と結婚した笑子が少しずつ現実を見極めどんどんたくましくなっていく姿は圧巻だが、これからも笑子やその周辺の人々が立ち向かわなければならない壁を想像すると胸が塞がる。