Fumiko Enchi photo

Fumiko Enchi

See author 円地文子.

Fumiko Enchi was the pen name of the late Japanese Shōwa period playwright and novelist Fumiko Ueda.

The daughter of a linguist, Fumiko learned a lot about French, English, Japanese and Chinese literature through private tutorage.

Fumiko suffered from poor health as a child and spent most of her time at home. She was introduced to literature by her grandmother, who showed her to the likes of The Tale of Genji, as well as to Edo period gesaku novels and to the kabuki and bunraku theater. By 13 years old her reading list had grown to include works of the lights of Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, Kyōka Izumi, Nagai Kafū, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. She discovered a special interest in the sadomasochistic aestheticism style of Jun'ichirō Tanizaki,

She was inspired to write plays after attended lectures by the founder of modern Japanese drama, Kaoru Osanai.


“Happiness--a small-scale, endearing, harmonious happiness--surely dwelt here beneath the low-powered lamps in the tiny rooms of these houses. A small-scale happiness and a modest harmony: let a man cry out, let him rage, let him howl with grief with all the power of which he was capable, what more than these could he ever hope to gain in this life?”
Fumiko Enchi
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“A woman's love is quick to turn into a passion for revenge--an obsession that becomes an endless river of blood, flowing on from generation to generation.”
Fumiko Enchi
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“Even the sadistic misogyny of Buddha and Christ was nothing but an attempt to gain the better of a vastly superior opponent.”
Fumiko Enchi
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