Fumiko Enchi Quotes

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.

The secrets inside her mind are like flowers in a garden at nighttime, filling the darkness with perfume.

Even the sadistic misogyny of Buddha and Christ was nothing but an attempt to gain the better of a vastly superior opponent.

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?

She was like a large white flower bathed in light, magnificent in her isolation.

You appear infinitely generous, but you are a woman of infinite passion, in hate as well as love.

Just as there is an archetype of woman as the object of man's eternal love, so there must be an archetype of her as the object of his eternal fear, representing, perhaps, the shadow of his own evil actions.

A faint tear wet Meiko's eye, so slight a bit of moisture that it passed unseen by Yasuko. Yet all the anguish of which she never spoke was compressed into that single drop

There. You see? You’re already a pawn in her hands.” She paused. “But you’re not the only one. I am too. I can’t escape after all. The more I want to, the more impossible it is. It’s awful; it’s as if my own will were paralyzed

Her spirit alternated constantly between spells of lyricism and spirit possession, making no philosophical distinction between the self alone and in relation to others, and unable to achieve the solace of a religious indifference.

It’s no game. Believe me, she is a woman of far greater complexity than you—or anyone—realize. The secrets inside her mind are like flowers in a garden at nighttime, filling the darkness with perfume. Oh, she has extraordinary charm. Next to that secret charm of hers, her talent as a poet is really only a sort of costume.

Shyness emanated from his dark features; he seemed a good-hearted sort.

We spend our lives crafting masks to fit the roles we are expected to play, but in doing so, we lose sight of who we truly are.

To his mind there were four kinds of beautiful skin. The first he likened to porcelain: finely grained and flawless in sheen, but marked by a hardness and chill. The second he compared to snow: duller and more coarsely grained, with a deep whiteness and an inner warmth and softness that belied its cold surface. Next was what he called the textile look, what others called silken; this was the complexion most prized by Japanese women, yet it had no virtue in Mikamé’s eyes beyond a flat, smooth prettiness. To be supremely beautiful, he thought, a woman’s skin had to glow with the internal life-force of spring’s earliest buds unfolding naturally in the sun. But city women, too clever with makeup, lost that perishable, flowerlike beauty at a surprisingly early age—and rare indeed was the woman past twenty-five whose skin had kept the freshness of youth.

Actions do not betray, but language is filled with the danger of betrayal at any instant. This quality is what makes language both infinitely beautiful and infinitely frightening.

voice. “Oh, it’s you.” The voice belonged to Mikamé, who seemed quite unconcerned about Ibuki’s disappointment. “What kind of a greeting is that? Listen, I found something in a bookstore near the hospital that I want you to see.” “More of your pornography?” “Wrong. It’s a reprint from an old edition of Clear Stream. Prewar. An essay by Mieko Toganō called ‘An Account of the Shrine in the Fields.’ Did you ever read it?” “Hmm, no. The Shrine in the Fields…isn’t that the place that comes up in The Tale of Genji in connection with the Rokujō lady?

Fujitsubo had learned to mold herself to a man by dissolving her identity in his; the Rokujō lady, in contrast, possessed a spirit of such lively intensity that she was incapable of surrendering it fully to any man. However tastefully clad in layers of sophistication, that spirit could not stay hidden for long once she had given herself to a man of Genji’s rare sensitivity.

the Rokujō lady was much more than a passing affair, and something in the way you wrote it made me certain: you must have loved someone else, someone young, not Akio’s father. And that person died, didn’t he? At the front.” “Yes.” Mieko said the one word, and nothing more.

Me ha parecido que la exhibición de las máscaras estaba destinada a una sola persona, mi suegra, no porque ella frecuente el teatro Noh o porque sea capaz de apreciar la calidad artística de las máscaras, sino por esa expresión de absoluta serenidad que tienen, esa especie de mirada dirigida hacia dentro. Creo que ella debe de ser una de las últimas mujeres japonesas que todavían viven así, dirigiendo hacia dentro sus energías más profundas.

I have never wanted to look back. The idea of looking deep inside myself I don't mind at all, but I am determined not to have to grope about in the past to dig out some reason to carry on living. No matter how narrow or indistinct the world around me becomes, I am determined to keep looking ahead. Even if I end up completely blind, the last thing I want to do is wallow in nostalgia.

Now that you're old and gray, surely you're pleased to have the memory of that young man's infatuation. The same goes for all those other incidents which you hated for their lasciviousness: that time a love letter was slipped into your sleeve by an anonymous student in the bus, or the afternoon you were followed home after your lessons by a strange man. Surely you think back on those incidents with pleasure now that you're in your dotage, as proof that once you were as pretty as a pink, that even you were once 'sweet sixteen'.

[...] she was able to combine women's extreme ego suppression and ancient female shamanism, showing both in opposition to men. In our own day, shamanism seems to have withered and died. Yet does it not, on second thought, offer a partial explanation of the power women still have over men? Perhaps it is true, as Buddhism teaches us, that this power constitutes woman's greatest burden and delusion -- and ultimately her greatest sin. But the sin is inseparable from a woman's being. It is a stream of blood flowing on and on, unbroken, from generation to generation. Just as there is an archetype of woman as the object of man's eternal love, so there must be an archetype of her as the object of his eternal fear, representing, perhaps, the shadow of his own evil actions. The Rokujō lady is an embodiment of this archetype.

Many novelists—including Izumi Kyōka (1873–1939), Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (1886–1965), Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (1892–1927), Ishikawa Jun (1899–1987), Enchi Fumiko (1905–1986), and Mishima Yukio (1925–1970)—were avid readers of the collection. Two of the tales inspired Mizoguchi Kenji’s cinematic masterpiece Ugetsu monogatari (1953; known to Western viewers as Ugetsu), which is widely regarded as “one of the greatest of all films.

A faint tear wet Mieko's eye, so slight a bit of moisture that it passed unseen by Yasuko. Yet all the anguish of which she never spoke was compressed into that single drop.

Did you come, I wonder, or was it I who went? I scarcely know - was it dream or reality, did I sleep or wake?