The Old Sow in the Back Room: An Englishwoman in Japan

Harriet Sergeant lived several years in Japan and gives in this book an account of her experiences in that country. It is an appalling picture: endemic corruption (even for the purchase of a house), racketeering, religion as business, the excessive importance of the group to which one belongs to. A merciless, brutal, egoistic and aggressive social environment: already at school children are badgered, resulting in several deaths per year.But the biggest victims in this overcrowded country are a Japanese minority group (the burakumin) and women.The burakumin should be compared to the pariahs in India. Because of their discrimination, many of them joined the yakuza (the powerful, also politically, Japanese gangsters) and are now feared.Women are totally subordinate to men. The comment of Amélie Nothomb in her book 'Fear and Trembling', where she says that she admires Japanese women because they don't commit suicide, are here completely confirmed.An eye-opening book.