Yasushi Inoue

Translated by J. Martin Holman

Stories that speak to the moment of childhood when the world of adults is as seductive as it is forbidden, by one of Japan’s foremost literary figures.

A father’s affair is first revealed to his son as he watches a local play. A group of young village boys form a lovers’ suicide patrol and stumble upon different illicit activities instead. Gossip spreads when the mistress of an out-of-town contractor arrives in the village. Thirty years later, a narrator recalls the allure and mystery of the young woman—and the mystery surrounding her death.

Observed sidelong and suffused with the powerful melancholy of inexperience, The Death of a Certain Woman collects ten stories by Yasushi Inoue—winner of the Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s highest literary honor—that speak to a moment of childhood when the world of adults is as seductive as it is forbidden and as brutal as it is full of pleasures unknown.

Yasushi Inoue (1907–1991) worked as a journalist and literary editor for many years, beginning his prolific career as an author in 1949 with the novel Bullfight. He went on to publish fifty novels and 150 short stories, both historical and contemporary. In 1976 Inoue was presented with the Order of Culture, the highest honor granted for artistic merit in Japan.