Kiyoko Murata

Island of the Bird-Folk

A Novel

From the author of A Woman of Pleasure comes a powerful new novel that sharply criticizes our modern attachment to our possessions, and specifically our land, from the perspective of two singular women who refuse to leave their home

A small island near the Japanese border which once had a thriving fishing industry is now home to just two old women: 92-year-old Io and 88-year-old Someko. As we see them grow their vegetables and catch their fish, it seems at first that they are self-sufficient, but the cost of deliveries from the boat supplying them with propane and other necessities is 200,000 dollars a year. Still, the village officer wants them to keep on living there to prevent border violations. 

The last surviving women are in fact saving Japan from invasion by a neighboring country. Occasionally Io’s daughter Umiko visits the island, trying to convince them to move to the mainland for their safety. Yet the two women pay no attention. They have a bigger mission than their safety—to become birds. They believe that their husbands and brother who failed to return from the ocean have morphed into birds, and they are preparing to meet the same fate. A novel about the rigors of time and connection to place buoyed by a deep love and attachment to family.

A Woman of Pleasure

A Novel

An unforgettable novel of fearless women banding together to pursue the lives they want, inspired by the real-life historic Japanese courtesan strike

In 1903, a fifteen-year-old girl named Aoi Ichi is sold to the most exclusive brothel in Kumamoto, Japan. Despite her modest beginnings in a southern fishing village, she becomes the protégée of an oiran, the highest-ranking courtesan at the brothel. Through the teachings of her oiran, Shinonome, Ichi begins to understand the intertwined power of sex and money. And in her mandatory school lessons, her writing instructor, Tetsuko, encourages Ichi and the others to think clearly and express themselves. By banding together, the women organize a strike and walk away from the brothel and into the possibility of new lives.

Based on real-life events in Meiji-era Japan, award-winning and critically acclaimed veteran writer Kiyoko Murata re-creates in stunning detail the brutal yet vibrant lives of women in the red-light district at the turn of the twentieth century—the bond they share, the survival skills they pass down, and the power of owning one's language.