Product Description

This is an unnerving portrait of women caught in a web of shifting relationships within an upper-class family in the years following the Meiji Restoration.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #393650 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 204 pages

Charles Beardsley
"Absorbing, sensitive, and utterly heartrending."

Monumenta Nipponica
"The author is a woman of great intelligence, profound psychological insight, and extraordinary sensitivity."

Library Journal
"A prize-winning novel by one of Japan's most notable women authors."

Customer Reviews

Quite Interersting
As a student currently majoring in Asian Studies and Japanese I find this novel to be a great resource for readers interested in Japan at the end of the Meiji period.

In fact, one can draw lines between characters in the novel and groups within Japan's social and political structure. The novel follows a woman who is asked by her husband(a rather wealthy man) to locate a concubine for him. This is both good and bad. Good only in that it means the family is wealthy enough to have a concubine but this is overshadowed by the pain it inflicts to Tomo, our dear protagonist.

Tomo's husband Yukitomo then takes another concubine and after her he even seduces his brutish son's dissatisfied wife. All while this is happening Tomo bears the pain and does everything in her power to maintain the family's status. She sacrifices herself in every way she can, adhering to the old traditions and virtues of classical Confucism as they are interpretted by Japanese culture.

A rather well written novel, I very much enjoyed it.

Winner of Japan's highest literary award
This is an exquisitely-written and heart-wrenching story of women's lives in late 19th century Japan. Tomo is the faithful wife torn apart when her husband gives her the task of selecting a concubine for him. Suga is the innocent young girl brought into the household as his lover; her fate is to grow older without the status of being a wife. Fumiko Enchi describes this household's complex web of relationships with such tenderness and subtlety. Reading this, I felt completely absorbed into another world.

A beautifully written and utterley gripping story
A seductive story set within the incestuous relationships of the Shirakawa family. The novel follows the story of Tomo Shirakawa the long suffering wife of an adulterous high ranking government official as she juggles her own needs and desires with marital responsibilities. Enchii, with a taut but delicate hand paints a moving portrait of a woman caught within the cultural constraints of her time. A beautifully written and utterly gripping story that has you hooked at every twist and turn. This novel has all the magical evocation of Japanese culture that was evident in Geisha.