A Woman of Pleasure takes place in Japan and follows the story of Ichi, who in 1903 at the age of 15 is sold into prostitution by her father. She comes from a remote island (Iojima) and when she arrives in Kyushu, she is dazzled by the large houses she sees. Although she has come so far away from home, and although she is raped as soon as she enters the large brothel, she seems oddly accepting of what is happening to her. Much later in the novel, she writes, “My parents taught me never to complain” (p. 275). Perhaps that’s why she seems resigned to her fate.

The novel uses an omniscient narrator, and while the narrator mostly follows Ichi’s thoughts, we also learn background information that Ichi could not know.  The narration dips into the thoughts of a few other characters, such as Shinonome (the most senior prostitute) and the teacher Tetsuko, who teaches the prostitutes to write (so they can write love letters to their clients) and to add and subtract (so they can keep track of their debt and their earnings). Ichi soon learns to express herself in writing, and we learn her deepest thoughts and feelings through short, almost poetic journal entries which she gives to her teacher. Her first one is:

Forgot my sandals,

Got called a dog, a cat.

My pa and ma they

Go barefoot on the island.

Here I wear sandals.

Does wearing sandals make you human? (p. 18)

The question of who counts as “human” is central to this novel. The teacher Tetsuko, formerly a prostitute herself, struggles with the fact that one of her favorite writers believes prostitutes are not human. A Japanese law also deems prostitutes akin to cattle. The prostitutes are bonded laborers, not free until their contracts expire when they turn 27, and then only if they have repaid the debts incurred by their purchase, food, and clothing.

Ichi does not realize that she is considered very beautiful, and that she has been bought for a large sum. She is assigned to be mentored by the most senior prostitute, Shinonome. After an early lesson in sexual technique, Ichi looks at the sky outside the window and her longing for home is revealed: “If she could fly over the rooftops, she might dive deeper and deeper into that sky as into the sea and swim all the way to her island” (p 11). At other times, she remembers the giant sea turtles that she used to observe in the ocean surrounding her island.

Over the next few years, Ichi gradually becomes conscious of the difficulties and unfairness of her position. She becomes aware of other options as some prostitutes escape and others manage to pay their debt and leave. The novel is based in part on a historic brothel strike.  

A Woman of Pleasure is an absorbing novel that gives readers glimpses into the day-to-day lives of women who work in a high-class brothel. Ichi’s days are filled with gentle humor, friendship, small joys and setbacks, as well as a dawning determination for a life of her own choice. A Woman of Pleasure was originally published in 2013 in Japan and won a prestigious prize in that country. It was published in English in 2024, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter. To get a sense of how the names and occasional Japanese words are pronounced, I listened to parts of the audio read by Susan Momoko Hingley, who is a native speaker of both English and Japanese.