White Elephant - by Mako Idemitsu (Paperback)

About the Book

Sakiko cannot say no. Hiroko is tired of hearing it. Two sisters, straddling American and Japanese culture, navigate womanhood.

Book Synopsis

With a deeply-imbedded indebtedness to their father Morimasa Morimoto, a self-made man in post-war Japan, two sisters struggle to uphold a family legacy. Sakiko moves to the fantastically free United States. Fragile and unsure in 1960s San Francisco, she clings to her brazen artist husband for stability. Hiroko, headstrong and irreverent, uses her father's money to move to New York, promising to become a famous artist. Intolerant of weakness in others, she crumbles in the face of her own shortcomings.

From catty carpooling moms to manipulative stoners, abortions to adultery, White Elephant is a vivid book from a seasoned artist turned writer. Mako Idemitsu, daughter of Rockefeller-esque petroleum executive Sazo Idemitsu, reconfigures her own family discord to reflect on the binds of being female in this gorgeous English translation.

Born and raised in Tokyo, Japan, Mako Idemitsu immigrated to the United States in 1963 where she met and married abstract expressionist painter Sam Francis. Disillusioned with housewife life she picked up an 8mm camera and became a pioneer in experimental video and the feminist art movement of the 1970s. Internationally acclaimed, her work has been featured in major museums worldwide and is included in the MOMA's permanent collection. This is her debut novel.

Award-winning translator Juliet Winters Carpenter has rendered the works of Abe Kobo, Fumiko Enchi, and Minae Mizumura. Within the year she will be the first person to have won the prestigious Japan-US Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature twice.

Review Quotes

"Idemitsu has written an autobiographical first novel about a young Japanese woman who comes to America to study and stays to marry, raise a child, and find her identity as a woman caught between two cultures."
--Kirkus Reviews

"...we should take notice and read. This is a compelling and haunting narrative tracking skillfully back and forth through histories, between mothers, sisters, daughters and wives eternally damaged by being born into a mad world and its fairy-tale curse: 'unfortunately, it's a girl'"
--Judith Adams, director of Whitestone Arts

"This novel follows a fiercely troubled family across generations and continents, from Japan's postwar struggles to economic recovery, and on to identity crises in the United States. Here we have an hysterical mother, a rich, domineering father, and sisters torn apart by sexual betrayal. Their search for reconciliation, at once poignant and furious, comes alive in a translation by the always superb Juliet Winters Carpenter."
--Phyllis Birnbaum, author of Manchu Princess, Japanese Spy

"In one of Idemitsu's novel's most memorable moments, Hiroko, a Japanese artist living in New York City, wrestles with self-doubt after her father revokes financial support."
--Publisher's Weekly

About the Author

Mako Idemitsu

Born and raised in Tokyo, Japan, in an elite and wealthy family, author Mako Idemitsu went to the United States in 1962 where she met and married abstract expressionist painter Sam Francis. While raising two children in California she became disillusioned with the roles of wife and mother and picked up an 8mm camera. As part of a feminist consciousness-raising group she began to make experimental films that explored women's issues and Japanese cultural influences. Her artistic work is critically acclaimed and featured in museums across the world.

Juliet Winters Carpenter

Translator Juliet Winters Carpenter studied Japanese literature at the University of Michigan and translation at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Tokyo. Her past translations include Secret Rendezvous by Abe Kobo, Masks by Fumiko Enchi, and the works of Minae Mizumura. In 2015, she became the first person to win the prestigious Japan-US Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature twice.