About the Author

Elisabeth Bumiller, a Washington reporter for The New York Times, was a Times White House correspondent from September 10, 2001, to 2006. She is the author of May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons: A Journey Among the Women of India and The Secrets of Mariko: A Year in the Life of a Japanese Woman and Her Family. Bumiller lives in the Washington, DC, area with her husband, Steven R. Weisman, and two children.

Reviews

"A rich, sustained look at real life in middle-class Tokyo....full of cultural insight.... Her discussions of [Japanese society] are clear, well-reported and skillfully interwoven with the portrait of Mariko"--Kyoko Mori, The New York Times Book Review

Author of a kaleidoscopic portrayal of women in India (May You Be the Mother of One Hundred Sons), Bumiller here chronicles the complex and sometimes surprising life of a seemingly typical middle-aged Japanese woman in what ``seems to be a nation of maddening conformists.'' The book is consistently interesting, even if at times the author can't bridge a cultural gap (she used an interpreter). Mariko initially seems comfortable with her life‘distant from her hard-drinking husband, devoted to her three children, gaining relief from part-time jobs, playing traditional music and dabbling in karaoke. Along the way, Bumiller digresses to discuss Japanese education practices, the mobsters known as yakuza, even Japanese TV. And her diligence pays off, as Mariko's salaryman husband, Takeshi, spills his sorrows, and Mariko herself divulges her own struggles with the life she has fashioned. The author concludes that Takeshi is ``trapped by his society,'' whereas Mariko and other married Japanese women, ``for all their secondary status, are ultimately more free than the men.'' Author tour. (Nov.)

"A rich, sustained look at real life in middle-class Tokyo....full of cultural insight.... Her discussions of [Japanese society] are clear, well-reported and skillfully interwoven with the portrait of Mariko"--Kyoko Mori, The New York Times Book Review