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Great Translations: Woman Running in the Mountains by Yuko Tsushima
A young Japanese woman is pregnant by a married man. She has screaming matches with her parents but refuses to have an abortion or to give the baby up for adoption. This was extremely unusual in Japan at the time. We are told in a footnote that in 1980, when this book was published, the rate of births to unwed mothers in Japan was less than 1% while in the US it was 18%. (I looked it up: in 2020 the figures are around 3% in Japan and 40% in the US.)
The Setting: Tokyo in the late 1970s.
The Story: I should say the following review contains spoilers. However, it’s not a book we read for its plot; rather, to understand the situation this young woman is in and her responses to the difficulties she faces.
Her family situation is focused around a peculiar kind of abuse. (She’s around 20 years old when the story starts.) She and her alcoholic father, a small man, have knock-down, dragged-out fist fights including wresting, hair pulling and bloody noses. Her mother screams while this goes on and eventually her teen-aged brother, larger than her father, separates them.
Even after she has had her baby she ends up in the emergency room for injuries one night. She survives in the house because he’s away most of the day drinking. She avoids her father and keeps to…
