The Beggar's Honor and Other Stories

Toshiko has finished school in Tokyo, and her family is taking her home to Kyūshū to marry a man she does not want. A week after the wedding she has fled, and sits in a borrowed room waiting for money, for letters, for the nerve to go back to Tokyo. Years later, a young mother running a magazine, she rides home through a blizzard to a house she dreads, and remembers the life of Emma Goldman.

Itō Noe (1895-1923), the youngest and most defiant member of Japan's Bluestocking Society, wrote these autobiographical stories from inside the life they describe. Her prose runs on, doubles back and refuses to resolve, and this translation keeps its pressure.

Contents: Self-Will (1913), Running Away (1914), The Beggar's Honor (1920).