Sata Ineko ; translated with an introduction by Samuel Perry.
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Place of Publication, Distribution, etc.
Honolulu :
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
University of Hawai`i Press,
Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.
[2016]
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item
ix, 261 pages ;
Dimensions
23 cm
GENERAL NOTES
Text of Note
Translation of a novel and four short stories by the Japanese writer.
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
The stories and novella translated here span a period of two decades and the most important events and themes in twentieth-century history. Café Kyoto (1929) takes up the glamorous, if tragic, lives of café waitresses in the wake of the late 1920s Depression. Tears of a Factory Girl in the Union Leadership (1931) offers a unique portrait of a woman who works with the underground Communist Party. The Scent of Incense (1942), written as a work of "home front" literature, was meant to help mobilize women as productive workers and supportive housewives during World War II. White and Purple (1950), one of Sata's rare postcolonial works penned just after the outbreak of the Korean War, reflects on the psychological damage inflicted on women during Japan's occupation of Korea. Sata's first novella, Crimson (1936-1938), joins a long tradition of women's writing in Japan that sought to assert women's "liberation" from what was seen as the oppressively patriarchal institution of marriage.
Text of Note
This exquisite collection of short fiction by Sata Ineko (1904-1998) offers readers a fascinating glimpse into the lives of women rarely dignified in fiction: glamorous café waitresses, feisty communist activists, a tortured novelist, a soldier's wife, and single women in Japan's Korean colony. Her delicately penned portraits challenge the tired, erotic tropes of the geisha and schoolgirl, while delving into the dilemmas women themselves faced in their personal and professional relationships.