The Story of a Single Woman

Having “crossed the ridge of 70 years,” a notorious femme fatale of Tokyo’s roaring 1920s looks back on her childhood and headstrong youth with gentle wonder in Uno’s autobiographical 1972 novel. Young Kazue emerges from the shadow of her gruff father, the dissipated black sheep of a wealthy family; her sole inheritance is “an impulsiveness of such ferocity it could not be checked by others.” Donning a mask of white powder, the striking beauty strides her chosen path from job to job and man to man, through betrothal to betrayal and back again with a shameless self-possession that scandalizes and fascinates her contemporaries. Bobbing her hair and adopting Western dress, Kazue follows her rising star to the bohemian demimonde, culminating in a torrid affair with artist Tanabe Tōkō, whose real-life counterpart Tōgō Seiji served as inspiration for Uno’s breakthrough 1935 novel Confessions of Love.