UNO, Chiyo 宇野千代.

Autograph working manuscript, written in pencil, of her famous essay “Kokyō no ie” 故郷の家 [“My Hometown”].

27 leaves (257 x 360 mm.), written on the author’s genkō yōshi 400 字詰原稿用紙 (400-character writing paper). [Japan]: 1974.

Uno Chiyo (1897-1996) was a prominent feminist author and kimono designer who made many contributions to fashion, film, and literature. In the 1920s “flapper” era, as an admirer of American and European cultures, she was one of the first Japanese women to adopt the bobbed hairstyle. She was a member of the Bohemian circles of writers, poets, and painters in Tokyo and lived an unconventional life, distancing herself from traditional roles. Her many novels dealt frankly with her numerous love affairs and entanglements, and Uno gained a wide following of women readers who found in her writings a sense of admirable freedom and modernity. In 1936, she founded the first magazine in Japan to focus on foreign fashion — Sutairu スタイル (Style) — and in the postwar period she became a successful kimono designer, holding the first kimono fashion show in the United States in 1957.

We offer the autograph working manuscript of her well-known and beloved story of her hometown and birthplace house in Iwakuni in Yamaguchi Prefecture. Born into a successful sake-brewing family, Uno was obliged to leave Iwakuni at the age of 18 due to her scandalous love affair with a fellow teacher. By the 1970s, her family’s merchant-style house had fallen into disrepair, and Uno, at her own expense, financed and oversaw its restoration, redesigning the family’s large garden. Today, it is a museum devoted to her life and works, designated a national Registered Tangible Cultural Property.

The text of this manuscript was published in the magazine Umi 海 (Ocean) in July 1974, published by Chūōkōronsha. Our manuscript contains many revisions, additions, and deletions by the author.

In fine condition.