Notice bibliographique
- Notice
Type(s) de contenu et mode(s) de consultation : Texte noté : sans médiation
Auteur(s) : Birnbaum, Phyllis (1945-....)
Titre(s) : Modern girls, shining stars, the skies of Tokyo [Texte imprimé] : 5 Japanese women / Phyllis Birnbaum
Publication : New York [New York] : Columbia University Press, 1999
Description matérielle : 1 vol. (xvii, 255 p.) : ill. ; 20 cm
Note(s) : Incluye referencias bibliográficas (p. 253-255)
- Janice P. Nimura, New York Times Book Review
The stunning biographical portraits in Modern Girls, Shining Stars, the Skies of Tokyo,
some adapted from essays that first appeared in The New Yorker, explore the lives
of five women who did their best to stand up and cause more trouble than was considered
proper in Japanese society. Their lives stretch across a century and a half of explosive
cultural and political transformations in Japan. These five artists-two actresses,
two writers, and a painter-were noted for their talents, their beauty, and their love
affairs rather than for any association with politics. But through the fearlessness
of their art and their private lives, they influenced the attitudes of their times
and challenged the status quo. Phyllis Birnbaum presents her subjects from various
perspectives, allowing them to shine forth in all of their contradictory brilliance:
generous and petulant, daring and timid, prudent and foolish. There is Matsui Sumako,
the actress who introduced Ibsen's Nora and Wilde's Salome to Japanese audiences but
is best remembered for her ambition, obstreperous temperament and turbulent love life.
We also meet Takamura Chieko, a promising but ultimately disappointed modernist painter
whose descent into mental illness was immortalized in poetry by a husband who may
well have been the source of her troubles. In a startling act of rebellion, the sensitive,
aristocratic poet Yanagiwara Byakuren left her crude and powerful husband, eloped
with her revolutionary lover, and published her request for a divorce in the newspapers.
Uno Chiyo was a popular novelist who preferred to be remembered for the romantic wars
she fought. Willful, shrewd, and ambitious, Uno struggled for sexual liberation and
literary merit. Birnbaum concludes by exploring the life and career of Takamine Hideko,
a Japanese film star who portrayed wholesome working-class heroines in hundreds of
films, working with such directors as Naruse, Kinoshita, Ozu, and Kurosawa. Angry
about a childhood spent working to provide for greedy relatives, Takamine nevertheless
made peace with her troubled past and was rewarded for years of hard work with a brilliant
career. Drawing on fictional accounts, interviews, memoirs, newspaper reports,
and the creative works of her subjects, Birnbaum has created vivid, seamless narrative
portraits of these five remarkable women.
Sujet(s) : Femmes artistes -- Japon -- 1800-....
Femmes -- Conditions sociales -- Japon -- 1800-....
Indice(s) Dewey :
305.409 52 (23e éd.) = Femmes - Japon
Identifiants, prix et caractéristiques : ISBN 0231500025. - ISBN 9780231500029. - ISBN 0231113579 (erroné). - ISBN 0231113560
(erroné)
Identifiant de la notice : ark:/12148/cb47232071d
Notice n° :
FRBNF47232071
(notice reprise d'un réservoir extérieur)