Yuriko Miyamoto - Writings

Writings

The Banshū Plain is a soberly detailed account of Japan in August and September 1945. The opening chapter of The Banshū Plain depicts the day of Japan's surrender. The setting is a rural town in northern Japan, where Miyamoto, represented by the protagonist Hiroko, was living as an evacuee at the war's end. The chapter captures the sense of confusion with which many Japanese received the news of surrender—Hiroko's brother cannot explain what is happening to his children, while local farmers become drunk. Miyamoto depicts a "moral bankruptcy" which is the major theme of the novel and which is shown as the most tragic legacy of the war.

The Weathervane Plant provides a thinly fictionalized account of Miyamoto's reunion with her husband after his release from twelve years of wartime imprisonment. The couple's adjustment to living together again is shown as often painful. Despite many years of activism in the socialist women's movement, she is hurt when her husband indicates that she has become too tough and too independent after living alone during the war.

Miyamoto also published a collection of essays and literary criticism Fujin to Bungaku (Women and Literature, 1947), a collection of some of the 900 letters between her and her imprisoned husband Juninen no tegami (Letters of Twelve Years, 1950–1952), and the novels Futatsu no niwa (Two Gardens, 1948) and Dōhyō (Mileposts, 1950).