Product Description

This Naoki Prize-winning work is a personal yet precise account of the lives of working women in the Edo period (1600 1868).

In the latter half of the Edo period, the warrior caste was finding itself pushed out of the top echelons of society by the rising merchant class,
and repeated famines swept the countryside. Against this backdrop, a small number of women vigorously built themselves independent lives with unusual careers—working as designers of ornamental hairpins, or even scribes—in the male-dominated society of the day. The stories in The Budding Tree recount the conditions in which these women lived.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1594065 in Books
• Published on: 2007-12-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 161 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Japanese author Kitahara depicts in these six tales the plight of single women struggling for success in early-to-mid-19th-century Japan. These young women protagonists are gifted artists or fledgling entrepreneurs who have lost the protection of men, either by the death of fathers or divorce from husbands, and dare to make a name on their own, often with dire consequences. In the title story, owner Okaji is struggling to keep her new restaurant, Moegi (the budding tree), afloat despite a famine and competition from her ex-husband's more established restaurant. In Love's Chill Wind, a schoolteacher resolves to maintain a school her deceased father founded. Moreover, these proto-feminists have to fend off pesky matchmakers and importunate advances by hardly well-meaning suitors, such as the married man in Innocent in Love, who seduces out of spite his childhood friend, now a successful designer of ornamental hairpins. Kitahara also elegantly portrays the dilemma of the young Oichi in Forget-Me-Not, who must make a painful compromise in love for the sake of her art. The timeless conflicts of Kitahara's characters will resonate with today's readers. (Jan.)
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Review
"Japanese author Kitahara depicts in these six tales the plight of single women struggling for success in early-to-mid-19th-century Japan. These young women protagonists are gifted artists or fledgling entrepreneurs who have lost the protection of men, either by the death of fathers or divorce from husbands, and dare to make a name on their own, often with dire consequences. In the title story, owner Okaji is struggling to keep her new restaurant, Moegi ('the budding tree'), afloat despite a famine and competition from her ex-husband's more established restaurant. In 'Love's Chill Wind,' a schoolteacher resolves to maintain a school her deceased father founded. Moreover, these proto-feminists have to fend off pesky matchmakers and importunate advances by hardly well-meaning suitors, such as the married man in 'Innocent in Love,' who seduces out of spite his childhood friend, now a successful designer of ornamental hairpins. Kitahara also elegantly portrays the dilemma of the young Oichi in 'Forget-Me-Not,' who must make a painful compromise in love for the sake of her art. The timeless conflicts of Kitahara's characters will resonate with today's readers." --Publishers Weekly

About the Author
Aiko Kitahara was born in Tokyo's Shimbashi district. After graduating from Chiba Prefectural Girls' High School she joined an advertising firm, beginning her creative work on the side. She won the Shincho Prize for New Writers for her debut work, the 1969 Mama wa shiranakatta yo (Mom Didn't Know).

She has gained a widespread following for her sentimental touch and her status as a woman writer creating detailed images of the everyday lives of Edo-period Japanese. Many of her works have been adapted for television.

Customer Reviews

Moving stories, seamlessly translated
The Budding Tree: Six Stories of Love in Edo is a collection of stories on a segment of the population usually overlooked in tales of Tokugawa Japan--women. These are not stories of samurai, feudal lords, or men visiting courtesans in the pleasure quarters. Instead they are revealing portraits of a handful of women trying to make a living in unforgiving economic times. Despite the subtitle, the stories are only occasionally about love; their focus is more often on creativity. The characters' occupations are varied, but all are in creative fields that allow a good measure of independence. Each woman takes an artisanal approach to her work, whether it be as schoolteacher, calligrapher, singer of joruri ballads, designer of custom hairpins worn with kimono, painter of ukiyo-e woodblock prints, or restaurant owner.

The stories take place in late Edo--more specifically, in the first half of the nineteenth century. This was a time when Japan was still closed to the West and society was rigidly hierarchical, with the class to which these characters belonged--artisans and craftspeople--far from the top of the social heap. As women, then, they are doubly marginalized. But here marginalization sometimes brings freedom to experiment, and others' low expectations become in fact a motivating force amid hardship and self-doubt.

At a time when Japan is experiencing runaway inflation and even, in some parts of the country, famine, and when one employee has started to steal from her, the restaurateur struggles to keep her business afloat, and begins to question her own artistic approach to cooking. "She was sure the starving masses would not pause to appreciate the Moegi's ornate serving dishes ... They would not notice the seasonal presentations of autumn leaves and how the cold noodles had been arranged to look like a flowing river. They would laugh at her, saying she was just playing with food."

The calligrapher's job is to copy out the drafts of books by popular writers before they are carved onto wooden blocks for printing (so when they are printed, her handwriting will essentially be the book's "font"). When her publisher accuses her close friend, an author, of plagiarism in his newest book and she is unable to locate him to warn him of their intentions to renege on publishing it, she takes it upon herself to quickly rewrite the offending chapter. When he finds out what she's done, far from being grateful, he is incensed that a woman and a mere calligrapher has dared to revise his work.

Each story focuses on one woman, yet the stories are linked by the women's ties to one another--in some cases a business connection or rivalry, and at other times a bond of friendship.

The translation doesn't feel like a translation at all. It is consistently understated and workmanlike, as in this recollection, by the woodblock-print painter, of her late father: "Yohei had been a man of few words, a trait that had earned him the nickname `the Clam.' Even if he were alive and Oichi were to tell him about her new commission, he wouldn't have said `congratulations' or anything like that. Instead, as he sat eating his dinner, his sunburned face would have broken into a smile and he would simply have held out a cup of saké for her. She wished she could see Yohei's smiling face again."

These may be fictional characters, but they feel vibrant and real, and this intimate look into their lives makes us want to know more about the colorful characters who once peopled the great city of Tokyo, and about the lives of its inhabitants today.