Book Review: 'The Dilemmas of Working Women' depicts the inner struggles of women in Japan

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Japan is infamous for its gender inequality. Few women occupy positions of political and corporate leadership. They overwhelmingly shoulder the burden of housework and child care.

This year, the World Economic Forum ranked Japan 118 out of 148 nations for gender parity.

The short-story collection “The Dilemmas of Working Women” by the late novelist Fumio Yamamoto tells about the people inhabiting this reality. Released on Tuesday, it’s being published in English for the first time.

The original was a best seller in Japan and won the country’s prestigious Naoki literary prize in 2001. After the author’s death in 2021, the novelist Yu Nagira wrote in the Asahi newspaper that Yamamoto quietly and realistically depicted the inner lives that women hid so they could live in peace.

This book brings those lives to the page in five raw, emotionally candid tales about men and women who often aren’t sure what they want and are frequently squeezed by societal and family expectations.

The title story is about an employee of a major corporation who doesn’t know what to do about her boyfriend who is itching to propose marriage. Another is about a woman in her 20s with breast cancer who has had a mastectomy. She tells her friends she wants to be reincarnated as a type of flatworm because they regenerate when cut in pieces.

Readers will observe women — and men — trampled by their partners and then stand up for themselves. And a character who can’t seem to figure out whether she values professional success foremost and whether she should spend her life with an underachiever who cares for her.

Brian Bergstrom deserves credit for bringing these stories to English speakers with his able translation.

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