Early Life
Fumiko Enchi was born in the Asakusa district of downtown Tokyo, as the daughter of distinguished philologist and linguist Kazutoshi (Mannen) Ueda. Of poor health as a child, she was unable to attend classes in school on a regular basis, so her father decided to keep her at home. She was taught English, French and Chinese literature through private tutors. She was also strongly influenced by her grandmother, who introduced her to the Japanese classics such as The Tale of Genji, and to kabuki and bunraku theater. At 13, her reading list included the works of Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, Kyōka Izumi, Nagai Kafu, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, and especially Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, whose sado-masochistic aestheticism particularly fascinated her.
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“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
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