The Dilemmas of Working Women

Stories

By: Fumio Yamamoto

Narrated by: Yuriri Naka

“Now offered in translation for the first time, this collection featuring women navigating societal expectations (and their small rebellions) is a classic.” — Boston Globe

A spiky, edgy collection of five sly yet sensitive stories spotlighting clear-eyed and “difficult” women who are navigating their identities as workers and women in contemporary Japan—a feminist, anti-capitalist modern classic published outside Asia and in English for the first time.

The Dilemmas of Working Women is Fumio Yamamoto’s darkly witty look at modern Japanese women who are ambivalent about their lives and jobs. In “Naked,” a woman who’s simultaneously lost her business and her husband finds that it is surprisingly comfortable to stay at home sewing stuffed animals, even if it makes her a “loser” in the eyes of society. In “Planarian,” a young woman recovering from breast cancer tells her friends and boyfriend that she would prefer to be the titular worm to organically regenerate her body. Each of these spiky women—as well as the three other protagonists in this groundbreaking work—chafes against social expectations that equate work with worth and demand women squeeze into the confining and sometimes dehumanizing role of employee in a world built by and for men.

First published in Japan in 2000, The Dilemmas of Working Women struck a nerve with Japanese readers and became a bestselling literary sensation, selling nearly half a million copies and winning the prestigious Naoki Prize in Literature. A quarter of a century later, this brilliant modern classic—available for the first time outside Asia and in English—remains deliciously funny and astonishingly relevant.

Translated from the Japanese by Brian Bergstrom

Fantastic nuanced stories

Great short stories about burnout and societal expectations for women. The narrator does a great job too !

Short stories for quiet moods

I liked this book alright, picking it up I read a review that said while a good book, it was very of its time and not reflective of the lives of Japanese women today. Knowing what I know about how Japanese femmes lives are in Japan right now I have to agree. The fact this book is a period piece is inescapable, from its context to its references. The question then becomes how it fairs when viewed in that context and what it offers to a modern reader. As a snap shot of early recession Japan and just a story collection this book is good. The stories are well crafted and by the end of many of them I was impressed. The women in these stories have been pressed down by work and societal expectation to the point of simply giving up. Depressed and numbed by work, yet still left with the lesson of work being life, they are stuck in the hard position of not wishing to work, yet knowing no other way to live. It’s a sad commentary on what capitalism and conformity can do to a person. Depression however is a very different state than desperation, and with the state of Japanese women’s financial and societal issues often in our time feeling desperate it leaves these stories feeling a little toothless in our current time. It is one thing for characters to be damaged and hurt by the system that they live in, but a woman sad she has too much free time just doesn’t hit the same these days for me, even if I am generally sympathetic to why she may feel that way. These stories also are at times inconsistent, creating a view of society that seems at times confused, and not on purpose. For example, one main character comments to another at one point that it is basically illegal to be unemployed in Japan if you are able bodied. This makes no sense though, as the main character of the first story is unemployed for two years. Maybe I’m missing something, and it’s a minor gripe, but details like this made the book seem more removed from our world. I enjoyed this book as a look back into the past, but in the end it just made me happy things are ever so slightly better for women in Japan now, and think about how some aspects of life have gotten much harder for people generally as time has gone on