"It was a path of suffering, of disappointment, and of frantic searching for something," Sata Ineko writes of her life. "When I look back at the path I have walked, all I can say is that I gave it my very best. I suppose, with life being such a difficult path to follow, that's the only way there is to live." Perhaps the life of such a woman who has ceaselessly collided with harsh reality is a work of art that illuminates the struggles of women.

Sata Ineko's life was initially shaped by the natural environs of Nagasaki and her childhood there. She was born of a youthful romance between Tajima Masafumi, a middle-school student, and Yuki, a young female student. Her birth was such an embarrassment to her relatives that she was initially entered into the family registry of her great-uncle, Tanaka Umetar. Her parents, however, overcame...