A Woman's Trial and Other Writings

Itō Noe's grandmother was carried off one night on her way home from a temple sermon, to become a stranger's bride. Noe follows that memory from her own Kyūshū village to marriage by capture around the world, and back to the language of Japanese weddings. In a Tokyo courtroom, a narrator watches a poor woman tried for keeping a thief's goods. A blacksmith drawn into the labor movement is flattered into ruin. Two sisters, one shy and one a tomboy, meet the same danger with opposite results.

Written in the years Itō Noe (1895-1923) spent with the anarchist Ōsugi Sakae, these essays and sketches combine reportage, memoir and argument. Two were printed only after she was killed by military police in September 1923.

Contents: Tales of Bride-Stealing (1917), A Woman's Trial (1920), The Fall of a Certain Man (1923), The Shy Girl and the Tomboy (1925).