14 Facts About Fumiko Enchi

Fumiko Enchi is considered one of the most prominent women writers of Showa period Japan.

Fumiko Enchi's father served as president of Kokugakuin University, was a member of the House of Peers, and was later credited with establishing the foundations of modern Japanese linguistics.

Fumiko Enchi's family included her paternal grandmother Ine, elder brother Hisashi, elder sister Chiyo, as well as maids, houseboys, a wet nurse, and a rickshaw driver and his wife.

Fumiko Enchi was taught English, French and Chinese literature through private tutors.

Fumiko Enchi was strongly influenced by her paternal grandmother, who introduced her to the Japanese classics such as The Tale of Genji, as well as to Edo period gesaku novels and to the kabuki and bunraku theater.

Fumiko Enchi's plays took inspiration from Kaoru Osanai, and many of her later plays focused on revolutionary movements and intellectual conflicts.

Fumiko Enchi then began to write fiction but unlike her smooth debut as a playwright, she found it very hard to get her stories published.

Fumiko Enchi continued to struggle with her health, having a mastectomy in 1938 after being diagnosed with uterine cancer, and suffering from post-surgical complications.

Fumiko Enchi had a hysterectomy in 1946, and stopped writing till around 1951.

Fumiko Enchi's novel is a violent, harrowing tale of family misfortune and physical and emotional deprivation, based partly on wartime personal experiences, and in 1954 won the Women's Literature Prize.

Fumiko Enchi contrasted the traditions of female subjugation in Buddhism with the role of the female shaman in the indigenous Japanese Shinto religion, and used this as a means to depict the female shaman as a vehicle for either retribution against men, or empowerment for women.

Fumiko Enchi's works combined elements of realism and erotic fantasy, a style that was new at the time.

Fumiko Enchi was elected to the Japan Art Academy in 1970.

Fumiko Enchi was made a Person of Cultural Merit in 1979, and was awarded the Order of Culture by the Japanese government in 1985 shortly before her death on November 12,1986, of a heart attack, suffered while she was at a family event in 1986 at her home in the Yanaka neighborhood of Tokyo.