Smiley ’s Reviews > This Kind of Woman: Ten Stories by Japanese Women Writers, 1960-1976 > Status Update

Did this mean that I had grown old? Should I be grateful that I had reached an age when I could accept without explanation the fact that human beings have thoughts and behavior that seem beyond rational comprehension? I felt a sense of joy in thinking of the flat features of Rie's melancholy, middle-aged face as being somehow like the short, dense petals of a modest white chrysanthemum. (p. 86)

It must have been seven or eight years ago, since the highway wasn't good as it is now, and traveling by car wasn't easy.
I was still staying in my summer house in Karuizawa even though it was mid-September. One day a woman's group in the nearby town of Ueda asked me to give a talk. I've forgotten what kind of group they were, but I left my house in the late afternoon and spoke to the audience ... (p. 71)

Our mission was to explain and publicize the "workers' school" we were going to open and also to feel out the current condition of the union. You smiled continually and made yourself agreeable to the union officers, but I couldn't do this. As we were leaving the factory, however, you told me that you yourself did not completely trust those union members. You said we must not, under any circumstances, ... (p. 6)