Description
Book SynopsisStunning biographical portraits explore the lives of five women--two actresses, two writers, and a painter--who did their best to stand up and cause more trouble than was considered proper in Japanese society. Their lives stretch across a century and a half of explosive cultural and political transformations in Japan.
Trade ReviewA book that sets out to disturb the cliched image of Japanese womanhood as largely passive and decorative and succeeds brilliantly. -- Colin Donald Daily Yomiuri Modern Girls, Shining Stars, The Skies of Tokyo offered me a new frame of reference, expressing a new, or rather a very old, kind of feminism-not mythic crusade but grace under fire. -- Karen Mirsky Geist: The Canadian Magazine of Ideas and Culture Bringing to life individuals from another time while providing the Zeitgeist of a historical period - and paying attention to just the right amount of detail to add colour - is no easy task. Birnbaum, due to her accomplished writing style, is able to pull this off in Modern Girls, Shining Stars, The Skies of Tokyo. -- Brian McVeigh, Toyo Gakuen University New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies Birnbaum's dazzling portraits of these five messy lives have much to teach us, about the relationship between life and art, about modern Japan, and about the nature of biography itself. -- Margaret Mitsutani Japan Quarterly Birnbaum brings a seasoned awareness to her work. Boston Sunday Globe Richly anecdotal... [Birnbaum's] stories of these five 'modern' girls, and the incidental details she finds room for, usefully complicate our image not only of Japanese women, but also of Japanese men. -- Julian Loose Times Literary Supplement
Table of Contents1. Slamming the Door, Scaring the Neighbors 2. He Stole Her Sky 3. Shining Stars, Lonely Nights 4. Modern Girl 5. The Odor of Pickled Radishes
