Uno Chiyo's career spanned four imperial eras, more than seventy years. Celebrated in her youth as a daring Jezebel, she came to be recognized in her later years for the skillful crafting and evocative depth of her narratives. Her stories ultimately reveal the "vulnerable strength" of women who have come to recognize the wonder of their own passions and desires. In this regard her work has been linked by critics with the sensual lyricism of Ono no Komachi, Izumi Shikibu, and earlier writers in the female literary tradition of Japan.

Uno Chiyo was born in Iwakuni, then a sleepy castle town on the Inland Sea. Her mother died when Uno was two, and her father, the ne'er-do-well second son of a wealthy sake brewer, was so profligate that Uno and her five stepsiblings were raised in near poverty and in constant fear of their father's explosive temper. But...