The latest addition to my website is Fumiko Enchi‘s 女坂 (The Waiting Years). This a feminist novel about the mistreatment of women in the family of a well-to-do official at the end of the nineteenth/beginning of the twentieth century. Tomo is married to Yukitomo Shirakawa and they have two children. However, he has now decided to take a concubine, something not unusual in Japan at that time. However, he asks his wife to find one for him, under the guise of hiring a maid. A fifteen year old girl is hired – she thinks she is going to be just a maid but her parents need the money – and she becomes his concubine. Two years later another ‘maid” is hired for the same purposes. Tomo is horrified and disgusted but carries on running both the household and the estates of the family, and even caring for the two maid/concubines. Her son, when he grows up, turns out to be something of an imbecile and treats women as badly as his father and even two of his sons will continue the family tradition. Enchi spares nothing in her condemnation of this behaviour and her sympathy for the women who are victims of post-samurai mores. As I stated in my review, while we might condemn this behaviour, similar behaviour is not unknown in the West today, albeit in a very different societal structure.
Definitely one I’d like to try, I’ve only read a few of her short stories so far. Sadly, not much of hers is (easily, widely) available, as is the case with many female Japanese writers…
Yes, only three of her novels available in English, which is very sad.
I loved The Waiting Years, TMN, and am still haunted by it many months after having read it. It was one of the best books I read last year.
Yes, I agree with you, it is a superb book.