The Shade of Blossoms

In its first English translation, Shohei's 1961 novel depicts the atmosphere and social mores of Tokyo's decadent Ginza District of the 1950s through the haunting story of an aging nightclub courtesan. At 38, Yoko Adachi abruptly ends a three-year romantic relationship with a married man without insisting on the maintenance or ""lump sum"" customarily bestowed upon discarded mistresses and returns to her former job as bar hostess, though she knows that time is ""unceremoniously laying waste to her."" The Ginza is portrayed as a hard world, where men and women use each other, the bar hostesses trying to turn casual sexual partners into patrons who will set them up in business or support them indefinitely. Calculating enough to begin cultivating such profitable relationships, Yoko has never become as shrewd or ruthless as the younger madams Junko and Ayako, who run the bars in which she works. Compared to them, Yoko seems naive; she self-destructively angers all her lovers and sends them packing, distrusting both love relationships and those based on desire and money. The only man she trusts, seeing him as a father figure, is impoverished Professor Takashima, who actually cares little for Yoko and eventually destroys her last hope for financial security. Despite the dry irony of Shohei's prose, there is great pathos in this story of the little bar hostess whose circumstances overwhelm her. This edition includes an informative introduction by the translator and an enlightening 1972 postscript by the author. (Sept.)