Territory of Light (Hikari no ryōbun)

Originally published as 光の領分, Hikari no ryōbun (1979)

Territory of Light is the radiant story of a young woman, living alone in Tokyo with her two-year-old daughter in 1970sTokyo. 

"Wonderfully poetic... extraordinary freshness... a Virginia Woolf quality" – Margaret Drabble

"Tsushima evades any label, her fiction transcends gender to focus on the existential loneliness that is at the heart of humanity." —Kris Kosaka, The Japan Times

Its 12 chapters follow the first year of the narrator's separation from her husband.

 The novel is full of light, sometimes comforting & sometimes dangerous: sunlight streaming through windows, dappled light in the park, distant fireworks, dazzling floodwater, de-saturated streetlamps & mysterious explosions. 

The delicate prose is beautifully patterned: the cumulative effect is disarmingly powerful & bright after-images remain in your mind for a long time.

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Perhaps no other female Japanesewriter has traversed the personal & the political so successfully in her work as Yuko Tsushima (1947-2016).

The prolific author burst onto the literary scene in 1967with her first short story, “A Birth,” while still a university student. Initially, Tsushima garnered media attention as the daughter of famed writer Osamu Dazai (1909-48), but she quickly forged her own independent literary identity & eventually won most of Japan's top literary accolades, including  Noma Literary Prize, the Yomiuri Prize for Literature & the Tanizaki Prize.

Early on, Tsushima broke the boundaries of the traditional Japanese I-novel genre, giving voice to a voiceless minority by authentically depicting the struggles of single mothers in society as a single mother herself. Tsushima was lauded both at home & in the West as a feminist writer for these early works.

“Tsushima’s work is often characterized as feminist, a label that feels both accurate & somehow incomplete.” — Gabriel Fine, The New Inquiry