Foxfire

by Nobuko Yoshiya, Lawrence Rogers (Translator), Yuko Otsuka (Illustrator)

"Foxfire" (Onibi) was first published in the magazine Fujin Kōron in 1951 and was awarded the annual Women Writers of Japan Prize in the following year. Its translation appeared in The East (2000, 36:1).

Nobuko Yoshiya (1896-1973), known largely for her Christian idealism and fiction directed at young women, was extremely popular in the prewar era and now seems to be making a modest comeback as more attention comes to be focused on women writers.

"Foxfire"'s hard edge is light years away from her prewar stories for young women, and certainly reflects the desolation and misery of immediate postwar Japan.

4 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

Nobuko Yoshiya (吉屋信子 Yoshiya Nobuko) was a Japanese novelist active in Taishō and Showa period of Japan. She was one of modern Japan's most commercially successful and prolific writers, specializing in serialized romance novels and adolescent girls’ fiction, as well as a pioneer in Japanese lesbian literature, including the Class S genre. Several of her stories have been made into films.

Nobuko Yoshiya on Wikipedia.