is a Japanese writer of

non-fiction Non-fiction (or nonfiction) is any document or content (media), media content that attempts, in good faith, to convey information only about the real life, real world, rather than being grounded in imagination. Non-fiction typically aims to pre ...

. She is known for titillating novels replete with

interracial sex Miscegenation ( ) is marriage or admixture between people who are members of different races or ethnicities. It has occurred many times throughout history, in many places. It has occasionally been controversial or illegal. Adjectives describing ...

scenes, and has aroused a great deal of controversy in Japan; her works have been accused of "

demon A demon is a malevolent supernatural entity. Historically, belief in demons, or stories about demons, occurs in folklore, mythology, religion, occultism, and literature; these beliefs are reflected in Media (communication), media including f ...

ising female sexuality".

Career

Ieda rose to public prominence through her 1986 book ''Gokudō no Tsuma-tachi'', about the girlfriends and spouses of

yakuza , also known as , are members of transnational organized crime syndicates originating in Japan. The Japanese police and media (by request of the police) call them , while the yakuza call themselves . The English equivalent for the term ''yak ...

. She spent nearly a year getting to know her subjects, and had also been shot at during the course of writing the book. It was later adapted into the ''

Yakuza Wives is a 1986 Japanese yakuza film directed by Hideo Gosha and starring Shima Iwashita and Rino Katase. Koji Takada wrote the script based on journalist Shōko Ieda's 1986 book ''Gokudō no Tsuma-tachi'', which is composed of interviews with the ...

'' film series by Toei, which initially starred

Shima Iwashita is a Japanese stage and film actress who has appeared in films of Yasujirō Ozu, Keisuke Kinoshita, Masaki Kobayashi and most frequently of Masahiro Shinoda, her husband. She is best known for starring in the '' Yakuza Wives'' series of yakuza ...

, and later

Reiko Takashima is a Japanese actress. Career Takashima starred in Shinji Aoyama's 1999 film '' EM Embalming''. She has also appeared in films such as '' K-20: Legend of the Mask'', ''Railways'' and ''Space Battleship Yamato''. Filmography Film * ''Like a Rol ...

. Her books continued to receive a good popular reception and be made into movies; her 1990 ''Hug Me, Kiss Me'' was awarded the 22nd Ohya Non-fiction Prize in 1991. ''Hug Me, Kiss Me'' was an account of her time volunteering in organization offering assistance to AIDS patients while living in

Savannah A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) biome and ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach th ...

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States Georgia may also refer to: People and fictional characters * Georgia (name), a list of pe ...

in 1987, along with an epilogue about the risk AIDS posed to Japanese tourists in

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

; its cinematic adaptation was the first film in Japan to openly address

AIDS The HIV, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. Without treatment, it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). It is a Preventive healthcare, pr ...

. However, her descriptions of the

African American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from an ...

community were accused of making AIDS seem "alien" and "distant" to her Japanese target audience. Ieda's later works continued her practice of touching on contentious themes; her 1991 book ''Yellow Cab'', about the eponymous stereotype of Japanese women overseas who allegedly engaged in indiscriminate sex with foreigners, attracted a great deal of media attention in Japan, including two television documentaries by

TV Asahi JOEX-DTV (channel 5), branded as , and better known as , is a Japanese television station serving the Kanto region as the flagship station of the All-Nippon News Network. It is owned-and-operated by the a subsidiary of , itself controlled by ...

and

Tokyo Broadcasting System (formerly ) is a Japanese media and licensed broadcasting holding company. It is the parent company of the television network TBS Television and radio network TBS Radio. It has a 28-affiliate television network called Japan News Network, as ...

. George Sarratt, her research assistant for the book, later denounced major portions as "fraudulent", even indicating that she had altered direct quotes from interviewees. Japanese women in New York also set up a protest group against the book, feeling that the stereotype had damaged their professional image; their activities, which were described as "Ieda-bashing" by one scholar studying the "yellow cab" phenomenon, resulted in a sharp decline in her literary reputation. Despite the negative attention she received for ''Yellow Cab'', Ieda continued to produce popular works; her 1994 novel ''Women Who Slept with the Bubble'' was made into a series of movies, the newest of which, starring

Yoko Mitsuya is a Japanese gravure idol and actress. Biography Yoko Mitsuya was born in Tokyo but moved to Saitama shortly after she was born. She began practicing ballet as a first grader; her dream was to become a ballerina. When she was in sixth grad ...

, was released in June 2007.

Selected works

* * * * * * *

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ieda, Shoko Japanese writers 1958 births Living people Writers from Aichi Prefecture Shingon Buddhist monks Japanese Buddhist nuns 21st-century Buddhist nuns