| NOTA |
(★)(1.Around the turn of the century, a young Japanese girl from a village near Yokohama was sent to America and enticed into white slavery. She was, of course, not the only one to suffer this fate, but this woman was Yamada Waka and her life story is more incredible than fiction. After escaping from a Seattle brothel, Yamada made her way to San Francisco, where she was taken into a Protestant halfway house, and while there she met and studied under Yamada Kakichi, whom she later married. Returning to Tokyo in 1906, the couple became active in the progressive circles that were modernizing Japan, and she became a leading member of the feminist movement that was one facet of Taisho democracy in the 1910s and 1920s. Early on, she contributed to the feminist magazine ´Seitoo [Bluestocking]´ and later wrote a women´s advice column in the Tokyo Asahi newspaper. She toured and lectured in the United States in 1937. From the end of World War II until her death at the age of seventy-seven, she devoted her energies to the rehabilitation of former prostitutes. This story might have remained untold had it not been for the persistent endeavor of the author, who heard of what had happened almost by accident. The present book is the weaving together of the two stories, the life of Yamada Waka, told without sensationalism, and the author´s account of how she was finally able to piece together this sympathetic portrait. 2.Tomoko Yamazaki is a native of Fukui Prefecture. After teachers´ training at Fukui University, she taught at an elementary school in a mountain village. Still in her twenties, she moved to Tokyo in 1954, and has devoted her efforts to researching the history of Japanese women. She is the author of a number of works on the controversial subject of women relegated to the bottom of the society scale. ´Her Sandakan Hachiban Shookan [Sandakan No.8 Brothel]´, winner of the Ooka Sooichi Non-fiction Award in 1973, was made into a play and a movie shown in East Asia and the U.S. as well as Japan. ´The Story of Yamada Waka´ has also been made into stage and TV dramas.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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