Original language:
Japanese Translated from: English
Authors: Arishima, Takeo
Translated by: Griškevičius, Petras
ISBN: 0-86008-237-7
Published in: Vilnius
Published on: 1994
Publisher: Pašekšta
Arishima was born in Tokyo, Japan March 4, 1878. He was first sent to a mission school in Yokohama, where he was taught English, after which he entered preparatory school of the prestigious Gakushuin peer’s school, when he was 10 years old. After he graduated from the Gakushuin at age 19, he entered the Sapporo Agricultural College. After graduation and a mandatory short stint in the Imperial Japanese Army, Arishima took English lessons from Mary Elkinton Nitobe, Inazo Nitobe’s wife, and in July 1903, he obtained a position as a foreign correspondent in the United States for the Mainichi Shimbun. In the United States he enrolled at Haverford College and later Harvard University. Arishima first achieved fame in 1917 with The Descendents of Cain (カインの末裔 Kain no Matsuei). In 1919 he published his best-known work: A Certain Woman (或る女 Aru Onna).
A certain woman, a translation of Arishima Takeo’s novel, Aru Onna, comes at a timely moment. In an era marked by society’s growing awareness of women’s abilities, and it’s recognition of women as individuals on their own merits. Arishima’s novel is about a young woman named Yoko who was born in the wrong country at the wrong time is interestingly appropriate, Yoko’s mother, herself a progressive woman, brought up her daughter based on “the new ways”, but ironically, she did not know how to treat the girl so she would not have problems later on in her life. Yoko, bright and self-willed, tries to find happiness in life the way her mother has taught her, but Meiji society around the turn of the century is not yet ready to accept this untraditional woman. She struggles with her everyday life, having to take care of her younger sisters.