Based on true events, Uno Chiyos Confessions of Love was a huge critical and popular success in Japan. A striking portrait of the mood of decadence that swept through the country in the jazz age, it is today is regarded as Chiyos masterpiece. In 1929 the painter Seiji Togo attempted a double suicide pact with his mistress, the nineteen year-old daughter of an admiral in the Imperial Navy. The bid was thwarted by the intervention of a domestic maid, but nevertheless the attempt caused a media sensation in Japan. Uno Chiyo decided to write a story about the event and visited Seiji to hear his side of the story. According to Chiyo they fell upon each other like animals, made love on a blood-stained futon and lived together for the next five years. The confessions of the title are Togos in the guise of the narrator, Yuasa Joji, an artist and minor celebrity who is estranged from his wife and child and who dreams of departing for a new life in America. A man who is powerless to resist the sexual attractions in his life, he becomes involved in three flagrant and conflicting affairs.
Each liaison pivots around the voice of Matsuyo, the casually rejected wife, whose accusations signpost Yuasa Jojis disaster in waiting.
- ISBN10 0720612616
- ISBN13 9780720612615
- Publish Date 1 July 2006 (first published 30 January 1989)
- Publish Status Cancelled
- Out of Print 15 August 2012
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Peter Owen Publishers
- Edition New edition
- Format Paperback
- Pages 176
- Language English