[The Waiting Years] is, in a sense, shocking, despite the fact that there are no explicit sex scenes and no coarse language. It is set in the Meiji period. A wealthy government official sends his wife to Tokyo to bring him back a mistress. The wife obeys because a woman always obeys her husband, no matter how much obedience may debase her. The result is an incredibly selfish man pitted against a woman with much bitterness walled up inside her icy exterior. The husband's further extramarital affairs (including one with his son's wife) deepen the gulf and turn their marriage into a contest of wills. In the end, everyone loses. The situation may not seem believable—yet how different is it from the role many women accept and live unquestioningly?

Anne M. Burk, in a review of "The Waiting Years," in Library Journal, Vol. 97, No. 7, April 1, 1972, p. 1345.