Book Description

Sumie Kawakami is an experienced and intelligent reporter who manages to get her subjects to bare their souls and share their anxieties in a book I found hard to put down. ” —Jeff Kingston, The Japan Times "Kawakami presents a frank portrait of Japanese women today, via these compulsively readable, expertly crafted essays. Further kudos should go to Yuko Enomoto for her seamless translation.” —Suzanne Kamata, author of Losing Kei “A tartly written, stereotype-blasting and beautifully made book.” —Roland Kelts, author of Japanamerica “Refreshingly intense” —Colleen Mondor, Bookslut "Smart and lively and thoughtful and moving, like a good Studs Terkel without encyclopedic pretensions." —Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, author of the best-selling A Series of Unfortunate Events “Full of rich details of contemporary Japan ... in the end readers should understand why Madame Butterfly no longer exists. Or perhaps never existed at all.” —Todd Shimoda author of The Fourth Treasure and 365 Views of Mt. Fuji "An eye-opening, detailed look at the private, intimate lives of Japanese women ... This is an intelligent and authoritative work, covering everything from adultery to sex volunteers and the role of fortune tellers in Japanese romance. It is at once illuminating and entertaining, credible and so engrossing you will find it difficult to put down." — Robert Whiting, author of Tokyo Underworld, The Meaning of Ichiro and You Gotta Have Wa Sumie Kawakami’s Goodbye Madame Butterfly is an intimate look at the sex lives of Japanese people from a female perspective. This groundbreaking work of nonfiction will shatter the myth of the pliant, coy Japanese woman and replace her with a complex, erotic, sexually charged and fiercely independent woman who struggles to find her place in a male-dominated society.