ARIYOSHI SAWAKO

(1931–1984)

   Ariyoshi Sawako was a bestselling novelist, playwright, and director from Wakayama. She attended Tokyo Woman’s Christian University and studied English literature, but after a long absence graduated with a two-year degree. An aspiring theater critic, she contributed to a theater journal just after graduating college. She was a candidate for the Akutagawa Ryunosuke Prize in 1956 and shortly thereafter published her first major novel Kinokawa (1959; tr. The River Ki, 1980). She divorced her first husband in 1964 and then published what is widely considered her best novel, Hanaoka Seishu no tsuma (1966; tr. The Wife of Hanaoka Seishu, 1978). She followed that with another bestseller, Kokitsu no hito (1972; tr. The Twilight Years, 1984). She died at age 53 of heart failure, in the prime of her career.

   See also FEMINISM; WOMEN IN LITERATURE.