“Pick a topic you love,” my PhD advisor told me. “You’re going to be working on it for years.”

At first, I bristled at the advice, thinking he meant I was likely to take a long time finishing my dissertation.

Was I really that slow?

Later I came to understand.

The dissertation becomes the foundation for future scholarship.

In most cases, it provides the subject for a scholar’s first monograph, and frequently all subsequent projects grow out of discoveries made while pursuing dissertation research.

I was lucky.

I had Uno Chiyo—a research subject I adored.

But I didn’t just stumble upon her works unguided.

I first encountered her in a graduate seminar I had at Columbia University. We were working on the “shi-shōsetsu,” or self-referential writing. We read the works of Tayama Katai, Chikamatsu Shūko, Yasuoka Shōtarō, along with Sata Ineko and Uno Chiyo.

Most of the stories we read depicted the angst of a narrator on the edge of collapse. They featured feelings of alienation, bitter frustration, and unrequited sexual desire.

Kind of depressing, really!

But Uno’s works were different. She wrote of scrappy women who confront loss and unworthy lovers and survive.

Her stories left me feeling almost happy.

Earlier I had struggled to write my Master’s thesis on Mishima Yukio, the writer who had drawn me to Japanese literature and graduate work. The thesis never gelled.

“Why don’t you work on Uno Chiyo,” my advisor suggested.

I tossed the failed Mishima thesis in the trash and began to read all I could about Uno. With the exception of a translation by Phyllis Birnbaum with a substantial introduction, there was little on Uno in English.

I felt I was entering unchartered territory.

I was an explorer on an expedition searching for clues and charting new paths.

I loved it.

Soon my Master’s thesis on Uno Chiyo gave way to a doctoral dissertation and from there a number of translations of her works.

Even after I published my first monograph, The Sound of the Wind: the Life and Works of Uno Chiyo, I was reluctant to let her go.

In was my contact with Uno that inspired me to turn my focus to earlier women writers.

In one of Uno’s essays she mentions the feminist journal, Seitō (Bluestockings, 1911-1916). I wanted to explore Seitō further, considering the ways the journal might have shaped the writing interests of a young Uno Chiyo. Whereas the wonderful independence of Uno’s life signaled liberatory tendencies, she never overtly claimed feminist aspirations.

I spent a summer thumbing through the pages of the Seitō journal and then dug back further to Jogaku zasshi (Women’s Education Journal, 1885-1904) an even earlier journal.

The more of Jogaku zasshi I read, the more surprised I was to discover a wealth of women writers in the late 19th century. Why had no one written about these courageous, innovative writers?

This became my next project.

And, although I dedicated years to these writers, I was never far from Uno Chiyo.

With Uno Chiyo in 1986

She has been my lodestar.

I have circled back to her again and again. I developed a graduate seminar on the “modern girl” in Japan, starring Uno Chiyo. I have continued to translate her works. Most recently I translated one of the stories we read way back in that graduate seminar at Columbia, “Parting Pleasure” (Wakare mo tanoshi, 1935), a story I now read in my Modern Girl seminar.

You can find the translation and an accompanying introduction in Bold Breaks: Japanese Women and Literary Narratives of Divorce (University of Hawai’i Press, 2025) edited by Anne Sokolsky.

In some ways, Uno Chiyo accompanied me on my own journey to write fiction. Although I would not say she was exactly a model, the character Daté in The Kimono Tattoo, definitely evinces some of Uno’s élan.

Besides, Uno’s love of and investment in kimonos inspired my own interest in textiles, which is of course important to my novel.

Last year I spoke with podcaster Olivia Meikle about Uno Chiyo and in the process realized once again just how important the author has been to me.

You can catch the podcast here.

https://megaphone.link/NSR5654310332

It’s a lot of fun. Olivia and her sister, Dr. Katie Nelson, did a fantastic job of editing, compressing, and curating our conversation. Uno Chiyo really comes to life in the process—scandals and all!

I am delighted that, as I near the end of my career as a professor of Japanese literature, Uno Chiyo is still with me.

I picked a topic I loved.

And, I love it still.