She also described racial discrimination in the United States, something she experienced firsthand during her time at Sarah Lawrence, and the depopulation of remote Japanese islands during the 1970s economic boom.

Sawako Ariyoshi was born on January 20, 1931, in Wakayama City, Japan, and spent part of her childhood in Indonesia.

[1] The family returned to Japan in 1941, and quickly moved from Tokyo to Wakayama to live with her grandmother to escape the bombings.

Her novel The Twilight Years depicts the life of a working woman who is caring for her elderly, dying father-in-law.

Among Ariyoshi's other novels is The River Ki, an insightful portrait of the lives of three rural women: a mother, daughter, and granddaughter.

[2] Her 1966 novel The Doctor's Wife marked her as one of the finest postwar Japanese women writers, according to the Japan Times.