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The End of Summer
Book by Harumi Setouchi
152 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1966
3 people are currently reading
147 people want to read
About the author
Harumi Setouchi
40 books18 followersBirth name Harumi Setouchi (瀬戸内 晴美).
After taking the tonsure in a Buddhist order, now known as Jakucho Setouchi (瀬戸内 寂聴).
She has publications under both names.
After taking the tonsure in a Buddhist order, now known as Jakucho Setouchi (瀬戸内 寂聴).
She has publications under both names.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 30, 2016
Activist, novelist, essayist, inspiration to many, Setouchi Harumi has lived a remarkable life, and is still active in her nineties. She goes by the name Jakucho ever since she became a Buddhist nun. It is a shame more people do not know about her outside of Japan. At least this novel, her breakout one, has been translated into English. It is a story about a love triangle, each individual having sustained a bad marriage.
The story centers on Tomoko. As a dyer of fabrics with her own business, she is more successful than the two men she is involved with. As a character-type in novels, movies or real life, those like Tomoko fascinate me. She is self-reliant, an artist in her own right though not compelled by recognition or fame. Sophisticated, she is not drawn to the excitement of the capital. Independent, she needs intimacy and yet fears it, total commitment to any one person. She has all the makings of a domestic, and yet there is a drive to her, not exactly of ambition, that prevents her from settling down (as the novel says, she is immune from the sanctions of conventional morality). Eric Rohmer populates his films with this very type. Often his actresses co-wrote the script with him. Here the story is written from the woman's point of view, with respect to the men involved, and is all the more fascinating for being autobiographical.
The second person of the love triangle is Shingo. He is older, and Tomoko has been living with him for eight years. He is a novelist, and an obscure one. He has wanted a companion on the road to death. Up until the opening of the story Tomoko had never been unfaithful to him. She considered him "a spiritual twin, part of her flesh," able to articulate aspects of herself she was incapable of expressing on her own. Their liberal living arrangements are a source of pride for her. Yet she never forgot the earlier affair with the much younger Ryota. He had married. Rumors are around that he moved to Tokyo six months ago, and is now divorced.
The story takes off when Ryota calls her up, the first time they have spoken in twelve years, to wish her Happy New Year. Shingo is not unaware that he might be calling, as Ryota let his presence be known. The older man and the younger man each think the other is strange. Tomoko acts like she has nothing to hide, which draws out the psychology of the tale. She makes love with Ryota for the first time in all these years. She has drawn Ryota near, and now she is back driving him away. As a result, "Her love for Ryota is more out of pity, his loneliness, despair, dissipation, that if she took her eyes off him for a moment he might self-destruct." When she was younger love was an abstraction, a way of ennobling the spirit. The novel has much to say about how this might change for a woman in her late thirties, still going through the process of rejecting domesticity.
Passages like these I imagine were not ordinarily written about up until it was published in the early 1960s:
"Sometimes she would look up from a dyeing stencil she had been working on so intently that she had forgotten he was there, turn to him sprawled out reading a book and ask, 'When am I due this month?' She had entrusted even the date of her menstrual period to Shingo."
An example of the novel's sensuality, "During the short breaks between street speeches, Tomoko sewed loose buttons onto Ryota's shirt in the shade of the reed screen by the side of the road. When she finished she bent her face near his sweaty chest and bit the thread off with her teeth."
Or the nature of Tomoko's dilemma:
"At such times Tomoko felt more tenderness for Ryota than when she made love to him. It irritated Tomoko that Ryota could never understand how the serenity of her nights with Shingo was even more blissful than sexual fulfillment. In fact, she thought, it was something that Ryota would not even want to understand."
At times Tomoko is overcome with despair; at other times strangely liberating sensations. She cannot be free of both men. About a third of the way through we learn she abandoned her husband and daughter for Ryota at one time in the past. It was Shingo who took her in after this happened. He too had left a spouse, for Tomoko.
Even as such it is very difficult to summarize this novel. I have a thousand things to say about it, as much as any of its main characters has to say but cannot.
As a novel its every line is written with psychological accuracy; there is not a trace of intellectual dishonesty in it. It does not overburden the story with irrelevant details. Jakucho is one of the many outstanding 20th century translators of Murasaki. You can see how the great poet's spirit was converted into this modern tale.
___________________________________
A movie version was made recently, fifty years after publication. It is available on YouTube, without English subtitles, and probably not for much longer. It is gorgeously filmed, and I think the atmosphere matches the novel well (I had imagined Tomoko differently but close enough). Anyone interested can find it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC6yO...
The story centers on Tomoko. As a dyer of fabrics with her own business, she is more successful than the two men she is involved with. As a character-type in novels, movies or real life, those like Tomoko fascinate me. She is self-reliant, an artist in her own right though not compelled by recognition or fame. Sophisticated, she is not drawn to the excitement of the capital. Independent, she needs intimacy and yet fears it, total commitment to any one person. She has all the makings of a domestic, and yet there is a drive to her, not exactly of ambition, that prevents her from settling down (as the novel says, she is immune from the sanctions of conventional morality). Eric Rohmer populates his films with this very type. Often his actresses co-wrote the script with him. Here the story is written from the woman's point of view, with respect to the men involved, and is all the more fascinating for being autobiographical.
The second person of the love triangle is Shingo. He is older, and Tomoko has been living with him for eight years. He is a novelist, and an obscure one. He has wanted a companion on the road to death. Up until the opening of the story Tomoko had never been unfaithful to him. She considered him "a spiritual twin, part of her flesh," able to articulate aspects of herself she was incapable of expressing on her own. Their liberal living arrangements are a source of pride for her. Yet she never forgot the earlier affair with the much younger Ryota. He had married. Rumors are around that he moved to Tokyo six months ago, and is now divorced.
The story takes off when Ryota calls her up, the first time they have spoken in twelve years, to wish her Happy New Year. Shingo is not unaware that he might be calling, as Ryota let his presence be known. The older man and the younger man each think the other is strange. Tomoko acts like she has nothing to hide, which draws out the psychology of the tale. She makes love with Ryota for the first time in all these years. She has drawn Ryota near, and now she is back driving him away. As a result, "Her love for Ryota is more out of pity, his loneliness, despair, dissipation, that if she took her eyes off him for a moment he might self-destruct." When she was younger love was an abstraction, a way of ennobling the spirit. The novel has much to say about how this might change for a woman in her late thirties, still going through the process of rejecting domesticity.
Passages like these I imagine were not ordinarily written about up until it was published in the early 1960s:
"Sometimes she would look up from a dyeing stencil she had been working on so intently that she had forgotten he was there, turn to him sprawled out reading a book and ask, 'When am I due this month?' She had entrusted even the date of her menstrual period to Shingo."
An example of the novel's sensuality, "During the short breaks between street speeches, Tomoko sewed loose buttons onto Ryota's shirt in the shade of the reed screen by the side of the road. When she finished she bent her face near his sweaty chest and bit the thread off with her teeth."
Or the nature of Tomoko's dilemma:
"At such times Tomoko felt more tenderness for Ryota than when she made love to him. It irritated Tomoko that Ryota could never understand how the serenity of her nights with Shingo was even more blissful than sexual fulfillment. In fact, she thought, it was something that Ryota would not even want to understand."
At times Tomoko is overcome with despair; at other times strangely liberating sensations. She cannot be free of both men. About a third of the way through we learn she abandoned her husband and daughter for Ryota at one time in the past. It was Shingo who took her in after this happened. He too had left a spouse, for Tomoko.
Even as such it is very difficult to summarize this novel. I have a thousand things to say about it, as much as any of its main characters has to say but cannot.
As a novel its every line is written with psychological accuracy; there is not a trace of intellectual dishonesty in it. It does not overburden the story with irrelevant details. Jakucho is one of the many outstanding 20th century translators of Murasaki. You can see how the great poet's spirit was converted into this modern tale.
___________________________________
A movie version was made recently, fifty years after publication. It is available on YouTube, without English subtitles, and probably not for much longer. It is gorgeously filmed, and I think the atmosphere matches the novel well (I had imagined Tomoko differently but close enough). Anyone interested can find it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC6yO...
April 6, 2022
Setouchi Harumi writes "Natsu no owari" ("The End of Summer," published as full set in 1966), a series of linked short stories about the conflicting emotions of a woman breaking away from her bonds. A collection of linked stories inspired by the writer's own adulterous affair. Tomoko, the lover of two men (one married), must summon the courage to free herself from the chains of conventional Japanese society, and find inner peace.
Setouchi Jakucho (Harumi, 1922-2021) was a Japanese nun of the Tendai school of Buddhism and a writer. She was born in Tokushima to a family that dealt in religious goods. In 1943, at the age of 21, while attending Tokyo Women's Christian University, she got married and gave birth to a girl the following year. After that, she accompanied her husband to Beijing. She returned to Japan in 1946, where she had an affair, which motivated her to leave her marriage and go to Tokyo to become a full-fledged novelist. Much of her work has been semi-autobiographical, while she also wrote biographical novels about famous feminists such as Ito Noe. In 1972 she became a Buddhist nun in the Tendai school of Buddhism, but continued her writing activity, now under the name Setouchi Jakucho. Setouchi's vernacular translation of The Tale of Genji was published in 1998. The translation is rather too free (more an adaptation) and not as good as those by Tanizaki Junichiro or Yosano Akiko, but all the same it became a best seller which sold 2.1 million copies.
Setouchi Jakucho (Harumi, 1922-2021) was a Japanese nun of the Tendai school of Buddhism and a writer. She was born in Tokushima to a family that dealt in religious goods. In 1943, at the age of 21, while attending Tokyo Women's Christian University, she got married and gave birth to a girl the following year. After that, she accompanied her husband to Beijing. She returned to Japan in 1946, where she had an affair, which motivated her to leave her marriage and go to Tokyo to become a full-fledged novelist. Much of her work has been semi-autobiographical, while she also wrote biographical novels about famous feminists such as Ito Noe. In 1972 she became a Buddhist nun in the Tendai school of Buddhism, but continued her writing activity, now under the name Setouchi Jakucho. Setouchi's vernacular translation of The Tale of Genji was published in 1998. The translation is rather too free (more an adaptation) and not as good as those by Tanizaki Junichiro or Yosano Akiko, but all the same it became a best seller which sold 2.1 million copies.
November 11, 2024
i absolutely could not stomach this book after reaching the halfway point where my tolerance for the circuitous emotional torture withered and expired on the floor. no doubt, there is some tender and touching writing that exhumes sensuality and intricate sentiment from a rectangular relationship. but beyond those fleeting moments, this is an exhausting pummeling of an experience with a rage inducing protagonist senselessly putting herself into gradually more obnoxious dilemma of the heart, entirely self imposed. perhaps story by story this would prove less tiresome, but collected together it is nearly unforgivably unilluminating and dull
September 9, 2021
i loved it
August 28, 2025
3.5/5 ⭐️
February 9, 2019
Una donna da un lato forte e indipendente, da un altro completamente dipendente dalla passione e dall'affetto che la tiene legata ad un uomo impegnato, da cui non riesce a staccarsi. Con molta forza, alla fine, riuscirà a staccarsi e a procedere da sola nel proprio cammino. Ognuna di noi penso possa trovare una parte di sé in questo personaggio e riflettere sulla nostra possibilità di farcela da sole. Bellissima l'ultima parte, che evidenzia aspetti ed episodi rimasti in ombra nelle altre parti e costituisce quasi un racconto a sé
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 20, 2015
First of all, Janine Beichman is the translator, not the author of this book. Could someone please fix this piece of misinformation?
The volume contains one novella and one short-story. Both are rather gripping, but I would have preferred to read them in reverse order, because the novella is the more satisfying of the two. A note at the beginning of the collection states that "The short-story recapitulates the material appearing in the novella, highlighting certain events and throwing the whole into a new perspective." Based on this, I thought the short-story would present an additional episode of the life of one of the protagonists of the novella, but in fact all the characters in the short-story have different names. There is a parallel in the sense that in both narratives, the woman leaves her husband for a younger lover, but the affair doesn't endure. My guess is that both the longer and the shorter versions are fictionalized accounts of autobiographical events.
Be that as it may, both stories display quite shrewd psychological insights. The novella concentrates on the final months of a very long affair between Tomoko, a successful fabric dyer, and Shingo, an unsuccessful novelist. The story starts in medias res when Tomoko stealthily visits another lover, the man for whom she left her husband years ago. Tomoko starts seeing Ryota again partly because she has become dissatisfied with the status quo. Although she doesn't expect or even wish Shingo to leave his wife for her, she is no longer happy about sharing him. However, Ryota grasps rather quickly that Tomoko is deeply in love with Shingo, and is unlikely to make a clean break, so he bows out. Indeed, Tomoko has profound feelings for Shingo, although their affair started unpromisingly with him getting blind drunk and under-performing in bed. That's what is so interesting about this story: the way it describes the affection between the lovers as much more powerful and hard to sever than lust or even love. Tomoko's decision to leave Shingo is not provoked by external pressure, nor has she stopped loving him. But after 8 years, she has become kind of obsessed with thoughts of Shingo's wife (who never appears in the book) and finds that their affair takes too much of a toll on her emotional and possibly her spiritual life. I was struck by the fact that apparently, in 1950s Japan, it was possible for a professional woman to live openly with a married man. There are raised eyebrows, but Tomoko seems to enjoy a kind of freedom unthinkable in the US at the time. The story chronicles very sensitively Tomoko's successful attempt to break with Shingo and turn a new leaf.
In contrast the short-story follows Makiko, a woman who gave up her daughter when she decided to leave her husband for a younger lover. Years later, she is involved in another affair with a married man, who has a daughter who shares the same first name with the daughter she abandoned. In the intervening years, Makiko had many affairs, and many abortions. In the striking finale, Makiko has to witness an abortion to write an article for a magazine on the subject. Strangely enough, seeing what has happened to her many times happen to another woman makes Makiko faint. In this story too, the focus is on the invisible wounds suffered by a woman who has led a promiscuous life and seems, on the surface, not to have paid a heavy price for it.
The volume contains one novella and one short-story. Both are rather gripping, but I would have preferred to read them in reverse order, because the novella is the more satisfying of the two. A note at the beginning of the collection states that "The short-story recapitulates the material appearing in the novella, highlighting certain events and throwing the whole into a new perspective." Based on this, I thought the short-story would present an additional episode of the life of one of the protagonists of the novella, but in fact all the characters in the short-story have different names. There is a parallel in the sense that in both narratives, the woman leaves her husband for a younger lover, but the affair doesn't endure. My guess is that both the longer and the shorter versions are fictionalized accounts of autobiographical events.
Be that as it may, both stories display quite shrewd psychological insights. The novella concentrates on the final months of a very long affair between Tomoko, a successful fabric dyer, and Shingo, an unsuccessful novelist. The story starts in medias res when Tomoko stealthily visits another lover, the man for whom she left her husband years ago. Tomoko starts seeing Ryota again partly because she has become dissatisfied with the status quo. Although she doesn't expect or even wish Shingo to leave his wife for her, she is no longer happy about sharing him. However, Ryota grasps rather quickly that Tomoko is deeply in love with Shingo, and is unlikely to make a clean break, so he bows out. Indeed, Tomoko has profound feelings for Shingo, although their affair started unpromisingly with him getting blind drunk and under-performing in bed. That's what is so interesting about this story: the way it describes the affection between the lovers as much more powerful and hard to sever than lust or even love. Tomoko's decision to leave Shingo is not provoked by external pressure, nor has she stopped loving him. But after 8 years, she has become kind of obsessed with thoughts of Shingo's wife (who never appears in the book) and finds that their affair takes too much of a toll on her emotional and possibly her spiritual life. I was struck by the fact that apparently, in 1950s Japan, it was possible for a professional woman to live openly with a married man. There are raised eyebrows, but Tomoko seems to enjoy a kind of freedom unthinkable in the US at the time. The story chronicles very sensitively Tomoko's successful attempt to break with Shingo and turn a new leaf.
In contrast the short-story follows Makiko, a woman who gave up her daughter when she decided to leave her husband for a younger lover. Years later, she is involved in another affair with a married man, who has a daughter who shares the same first name with the daughter she abandoned. In the intervening years, Makiko had many affairs, and many abortions. In the striking finale, Makiko has to witness an abortion to write an article for a magazine on the subject. Strangely enough, seeing what has happened to her many times happen to another woman makes Makiko faint. In this story too, the focus is on the invisible wounds suffered by a woman who has led a promiscuous life and seems, on the surface, not to have paid a heavy price for it.
March 19, 2014
Un libro piuttosto diverso dai canoni della letteratura giapponese moderna, ed in positivo. Un'autopsia dei triangoli amorosi e delle dinamiche di coppia, che seppur autobiografico non dispensa critiche a tutti i suoi partecipanti, persino la protagonista - miracolo! Lo stile è gradevole e più complesso di quanto di solito si degnino gli scrittori giapponesi, probabilmente perché scritto negli anni '60. Unico difetto: qualche volta si sarebbe potuto mostrare un po' di più i sentimenti, e parlare più nel dettaglio anche di cosa provano Ryota e Shingo. Comunque, promosso a pieni voti. Menzione di nota anche per il racconto presente alla fine, quasi più coinvolgente - e nell'ultima scena, disturbante - persino di tutto il romanzo.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews