Susaki Paradise

First published in Japan in 1955, a year before the introduction of anti-prostitution laws, Yoshiko Shibaki’s Susaki Paradise is a collection of six interlinked stories set around Bar Chigusa 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. A bracing look at the dreams of those whose profession it is to sustain the fantasies of men, the stories in this collection formed the inspiration behind Yuzo Kawashima's Suzaki 'Paradise: Red Light' and Kenji Mizoguchi's 'Street of Shame (both 1956)'. In the hands of Yoshiko Shibaki, these precarious, transient women living on the outskirts of society are handled 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. Susaki Paradise marks the first appearance of Yoshiko Shibaki's writing in English.