Susaki Paradise is a book containing six interlinked stories set around a bar and its tough landlady, Tokuko. On the edge of a fading pleasure district, the bar becomes a refuge for women facing desperation: a conflicted barmaid, a naive teenager and a former prostitute longing for independence. First published in Japan in 1955, a year before the introduction of anti-prostitution law, the book marks the first appearance of Yoshiko Shibaki's work in English.
Shibaki’s bracing look at the dreams of those whose profession it is to sustain the fantasies of men formed the inspiration behind Yuzo Kawashima's Suzaki Paradise: Red Light and Kenji Mizoguchi's Street of Shame (both 1956). These precarious, transient women living on the outskirts of society are handled by Shibaki with a disarming and devastating combination of realism, lyricism and savage humour.
Yoshiko Shibaki (1914-1991) was one of the leading women writers of women's literature in the postwar period, and the second woman to win Japan's esteemed Akutagawa Prize.
Another Gaze, 228pp, 18cm x 11cm, paperback
