Chiyo Uno

Uno was born in Iwakuni, Yamaguchi.[1] In 1915 she was fired from her job as a teacher's assistant due to an affair she was having with a colleague.[2] She married her cousin, a banker named Fujimara Tadashi, in 1919.[2][3] Following an initial literary success of winning of a prize for her short story Shifun no Kao, or Painted Face, in 1921, Uno left Tadashi and moved to Tokyo.[2][3]

Like many young Japanese people of the 1920s, Uno was fascinated with American and European culture and dress and in 1927 was one of the first women in Japan to bob her hair like a flapper.[1] Beyond hairstyles, Uno also began to pursue the life of a free-spirited woman. She wanted to be a moga, or "modern girl", and not confined to just the role of supportive wife and mother. She became part of the Bohemian world of Tokyo, having liaisons with other writers, poets and painters.

In 1933, Uno started publishing the serialised novel Confessions of Love (色ざんげ, Iro zange), which brought her much fame.[4] The novel details an artist and his various love affairs, and a suicide attempt with his mistress.[4] Uno had a romance with Seiji Tōgō, the artist on whose biography the novel was based on, and then turned their involvement into a best-selling story.[1] She also wrote convincingly from the perspective of a man in Confessions of Love, which further added to her book's appeal.[2]

Shortly after the success of Confessions of Love, Uno started a magazine called Sutairu (スタイル), or Style in 1936, which was the first of its kind in Japan to focus on foreign fashions.[1] Sutairu took up much of her time through the following decades until its bankruptcy in 1959.[2]

Uno continued to write and to intrigue a faithful audience of Japanese women, who found a sense of liberation in Uno's prose. Even if Uno's readers remained within conventional boundaries themselves, they could escape briefly through her stories of lovers and entanglements. And despite her obvious femininity, from Confessions of Love throughout her literary career, Uno was able to write skillfully from both male and female perspectives.

Uno also became successful as a kimono designer, and along with her assistant designer Tomiyo Hanazawa, Uno traveled to the United States to stage the first kimono fashion show in the United States in 1957.[2]

In later years, Uno's popularity was given formal status as she was recognized by the Emperor and assumed the honor of being one of Japan's oldest and most talented female writers.[1] In 1983 she published the memoir I Will Go On Living (Ikite yuku watakushi), which was widely read and adapted for television.[1] She was named a "person of cultural merit" in 1990.[1]

She stated that the essence of her life was to have not followed anyone else's rules and to have done as she pleased. Married often with varying success, Uno found it difficult to remain with just one man, and it was said that she would even move to a new house every time a major affair or marriage ended.

She died in 1996 at the age of 98 due to pneumonia.[1][3]

• Confessions of Love, 1933-1935[4]
• Ningyoshi Tenguya Kyukichi (The Puppet Master Tenguya Kyukichi), 1942[2]
• Ohan, 1957[2]
• Sasu (To Sting), 1964[2]
• Kaze no Oto (The Sound of the Wind), 1969[2]
• Kofuku (Blessings), 1970[2]
• The Story of a Single Woman, 1972[5]
• Mama no Hanashi (Mama-san's Story), 1976[2]
• Cheri ga Shina (Cherry is Dead), 1976[2]
• I Will Go On Living, 1983[1]
• Ippen Harukaze ga Fuitekita (Suddenly a Spring Wind), 1987[2]

• 1957, Noma Literary Prize

• Prominent People of Minato City Chiyo Uno (in English)
• Synopsis of Ohan at JLPP (Japanese Literature Publishing Project) (in English)
• The Sound of the Wind: The Life and Works of Uno Chiyo. Rebecca L. Copeland (1992)