Goodbye Madame Butterfly, book

Goodbye Madame Butterfly: Sex, Marriage and the Modern Japanese Woman. By Sumie Kawakami.

US$20
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Reviews and Press

“Sumie Kawakami is an experienced and intelligent reporter who manages to get her subjects to bare their souls and share their anxieties in a book I found hard to put down. ”

— Jeff Kingston, The Japan Times

“Kawakami presents a frank portrait of Japanese women today, via these compulsively readable, expertly crafted essays. Further kudos should go to Yuko Enomoto for her seamless translation.”

— Suzanne Kamata, author of Losing Kei

“A tartly written, stereotype-blasting and beautifully made book.”

— Roland Kelts, author of Japanamerica

“Refreshingly intense”

— Colleen Mondor Bookslut

Neojaponisme provides a lengthy and in depth bi-lingual interview with Sumie Kawakami.

“Goodbye Madame Butterfly is full of rich details of contemporary Japan ... in the end readers should understand why Madame Butterfly no longer exists. Or perhaps never existed at all.”

— Todd Shimoda author of The Fourth Treasure and 365 Views of Mt. Fuji

Daily Yomiuri interview and feature on Sumie Kawakami and Goodbye Madame Butterfly.

“Smart and lively and thoughtful and moving, like a good Studs Terkel without encyclopedic pretensions.”

— Daniel Handler aka Lemony Snicket author of the best-selling A Series of Unfortunate Events

“An eye-opening, detailed look at the private, intimate lives of Japanese women ... This is an intelligent and authoritative work. It is at once illuminating and entertaining, credible and so engrossing you will find it difficult to put down.”

— Robert Whiting, author of Tokyo Underworld, The Meaning of Ichiro and You Gotta Have Wa