This is one of those translated books that doesn't gel with me for some reason. I thought it was a story with 5 women telling their own stories and then at some point they do meet but instead is just different short stories. I just found the stories not so appealing to me, maybe is the translation? Not sure.

The thing I love about novels and short stories like these by Japanese authors is that they convey social anxieties and the work/life balance so openly and blatantly that it leaves soooo much room for your own thoughts and feelings. Books like this and Convenience Store Woman are gifts because of the gaps they leave for you to fill.

Fumio Yamamoto’s The Dilemmas of Working Women is a sharp, emotionally resonant collection of five short stories that delve into the complexities of modern womanhood in Japan. Originally published in 2000 and newly translated into English, the book captures the quiet struggles of characters navigating societal expectations around work, marriage, and personal identity.
Each story offers a unique perspective—four from women, one from a man—ranging from a breast cancer survivor contemplating her altered body to a mother overwhelmed by domestic life. Yamamoto's writing is dryly humorous, poignant, and strikingly observant.

The dilemmas of working women is a collection of short stories centered around the lives of unconventional and complex women. Each individual story displays a women whom at one point in time lived an ordinary life and has since strayed considerably from this path. The protagonists and supporting female characters in these chapters portray a wide variety of ages from children to the elderly.

In addition, they have vastly different personalities and ways of life, from full time housewife to unemployed chronically ill patient. This book, thought published originally in 2000, provides a culturally relevant commentary on ever evolving gender roles within the context of a society that is slow to recognise and accommodate any divergence from traditional norms. Thoroughly enjoyable read.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC!

I thought this was going to be one story about five women, or five interlocking long short stories, but in fact it was five long short stories with no overlap or interaction. I preferred the first one, but that might have been down to my growing realisation that the others weren't linked. The last one being narrated by a man seemed a bit odd. But it's always good to have Japanese books highlighting women's lives and the patriarchal society translated and shared.

A collection of short stories. The title of the book is the title of one of the stories.

If you've previously read Japanese fiction about magical cats and coffee shops, then this is a completely different level of fiction. A glimpse into lives of real women in Japan, albeit 25 years ago. However, in my opinion this could have been written today. The only thing I noticed was the absence of continued reference to technology, particularly mobile phones and social media.

The stories are brilliantly written (and translated). It felt like you were looking at life rather than reading a story. Each woman revealing her flaws and strengths, but not in a stylised way. In the last story the narrator is a man, which threw me as the other stories are narrated by a woman. It took me a minute to get that straight in my head.

I'm not the biggest fan of short stories, but these all felt a lot longer and so enjoyable. There was a depth achieved which is difficult to find when reading a smaller number of words. Whilst not neatly sewn up they all made me think about what came next.

There is also some insight into the author by the translator at the end of the book.

The Dilemmas of Working Women consisted of five stories written by Fumio Yamamoto, originally published in 2000 but first translated to English in 2025: Naked, Planarian, Here Which is Nowhere, The Dilemmas of Working Women, and A Tomorrow Full of Love. All of them offered slightly off-kilter point-of-views of life, kind of from-the-outside-looking-in but not really: the characters had been "normal" (or "lived normally") once but not anymore. I really liked that immediately into each story you just get the characters' archetype, like, you know these types of people in real life. The first story was my favorite (absolutely obsessed with the winner-loser dichotomy in this one), the second and third stories were very well-written but upsetting, the fourth story left me a bit confused, and the fifth story was ok. I also liked how each of the story ended, the author got such a way of cutting the narrative to a close. The title of the book is slightly misleading because it was just the title of one of the stories, and not all of the stories focused on employment although all of them do relate to work or a job.

eARC provided by NetGalley & Little, Brown Book Group UK.

This book is a series of short stories outlining the day to day lives of women in Japan.. I found the book compelling reading. It gave insight into the culture around women of which there are similarities i am sure world wide. The bio about the author was also worth reading to put everything in context.

i felt so low at some points reading this. but at others i felt like someone was speaking to either small or large parts of ourselves. but i also felt how in different pockets of the world some (mostly woman lets be honest have it so bad. they are forced or wholed up in these little avenues they either cant run free from or dont know anything different due to society and culture. but also looking to our "developed" world. how sad it is that in most cases the world hasn't moved on at all, not in truth, not beyond the lip service or pretence.
but i do love these books. be it short or longer novels where we get to see a snippet or section of life. people often say where is the story? but that is exact;y where the story is for me.
a book honest and at times raw. but it compelled me through each story. i could easily have known these characters in longer novels but they did for what we needed to see, work perfectly as they were.

#thedilemmasofworkingwomen written by #fumioyamamoto masterfully translated and brought to life by @asa_no_burei thanks to @netgalley #netgalley and @littlebrownbookgroup_uk for this #arc

Firstly, this is nothing like the warm Japanese fiction we have seen over the last year or so, no cats play a part as such and there are no interventions like before the coffee gets cold or the kamogawa food detectives. This book is very original and I feel blessed to have been able to read it
It's a series of short stories about women in various situations or times in their lives and they are struggling in one way or another. Most of the hardship relates to societal or personal expectations of women and/or the character in question.

None of the stories are tidied up or reach a digestible conclusion and the author is very deliberate in doing this, if I could take only one thing from this book, it is that women should do whatever they want to do, unapologetically and live for themselves. Yamamoto writes her characters exactly with this in mind as they crash against the norms and do what they want to do.

These stories on their own are really good, Yamamoto's writing reminds me a little of @kawakami_mieko
or @sayaka_murata but she truly is different to both of these writers. I think what makes these stories really shine for me, is the piece at the end of the book by @asa_no_burei, it really got under my skin and made me reflect on these stories, understand their depth and how Yamamoto lived her life exactly how she wrote this and many other books.

Out on 3rd July 2025, if you want something original and different from #translatedjapanesefiction
I encourage you to get this book 😊 and I hope we see more of Yamamoto's writing translated ASAP!?!?

#honnomushi100 #reading #japanesefiction #translatedfiction #translatedjapaneseliterature #booksfromjapan #booklover #bookstagram #translatedgems #japaneseauthor #translatedjapaneseliterature #japaneselit #JAPANESEAUTHORS #newjapanesefiction #newbooks2025

👩🏻‍💻 REVIEW 👩🏻‍💻

The Dilemmas of Working Women by Fumio Yamamoto (translated by Brian Bergstrom)

Release Date: 3rd July 2025

Thank you @netgalley and @littlebrownbookgroup_uk / @viragopress for the e-ARC

⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

📝 - Izumi needs to get a job.
Haruka needs to stop talking about how she once had cancer.
Katō needs to get through a shift at the convenience store without being harassed.
Mito needs to break up with her boyfriend - or marry him.
Sumie just needs somewhere to live. 
In this classic Japanese bestseller, published in English twenty-five years after it took Japan by storm, the lives of five ordinary women are depicted with irresistible humour and searing emotional insight

💭 - Unfortunately I did not love this one. I can’t tell whether maybe some aspect has gone over my head, or it just wasn’t for me generally, because I found the stories relatively boring and lacklustre personally. Honestly very little to say on this one and I don’t think anything will stick with me. Oh well. Win some, lose some.

#bookstagram #fumioyamamoto #bookstagrammer #bookreview #japanesefiction #shortstories #translatedfiction #bookreviewers #japaneseliterature

“We’re so often the ones who sow the seeds of our own downfall.”

In ‘The Dilemmas of Working Women’ we meet 5 different woman, each with their own unique lives and problems, and take an introspective look at how they choose to deal with their problems. An overarching theme of the stories seems to be that whilst the initial problems the woman face aren’t their fault, they are the cause of their continued suffering and they can help themselves- if they want to.

Izumi didn’t choose to lose her job but she did choose to rot and wallow in her own depression, though her story ends on a hopeful note as she finally leans on a friend and we get the sense she’s ready to move on with her life. Conversely, Haruka just can’t let go of the ‘sick woman’ persona that’s become her identity, even though she’s in recovery. She’s rude and angry and bitter, it doesn’t seem like she wants to change, but that’s a very real reflection of how some people chose to deal with their problems. Kato is a housewife who’s overworked and underappreciated- it’s not her fault the family is struggling for money and she’s doing her best to help- but she realises she’s been a doormat by letting her husband shirk responsibility and allowing her children be so hateful towards her, and we see her finally stand up for herself as her story ends. Miko didn’t chose to fall out of her love with her boyfriend but she did choose to have multiple affairs and to drag out the relationship, only ending things when she’s forced into a corner- ultimately doing the right thing but not for the right reason.

So that’s 4 of the women, Sumie is a bit of a different story. Her story is written from the perspective of a man in her life and, to echo what other reviewers have said, this makes her story an outlier and a bit of a miss. The other 4 stories feel like they cover real problems that real woman have faced, but in Sumie’s story she doesn’t feel real because we only really see her through the male gaze. It’s still an interesting story and well written- I actually really liked the male character and his relationship with his daughter was beautiful and sad- but it shifts the tone of the book, making it a bit of a disappointing story to end the collection on.

Overall, I did enjoy this book as the women felt real- they didn’t react the way they’re ‘supposed’ to and they aren’t ‘good’ people, they’re flawed and that’s ok. The first 4 stories felt so relatable even though they cover experiences I’ve never had- and that’s really the whole point. Whether we want to admit it or not, women have universal experiences that transcend age, time and country so anyone who identifies as a women will be able to take something away from this book.

Thank you to Little, Brown Book Group UK | Virago and NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC. This review can be viewed on my Goodreads page at the following link: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7555325248

This collection of short stories provides an interesting, rather unsettling view of women's lives in Japan, though I think it's worth bearing in mind that it was written 25 years ago and hopefully society now is a little less patriarchal than it was. Each of the women's stories is quite different, though I have to say I struggled to like any of the women portrayed!
I was surprised by the final story that is actually written from a man's point of view - it felt different to the others in the collection, and whilst it was ostensibly Sumie's story, it was the man's story and life we followed for the most part, which sat a little oddly with the other stories.
Some of the stories were uncomfortable to read, and deal with serious illness and depression. But the collection is still very readable, and it felt like an excellent translation.

The Dilemmas of Working Women is a collection of short stories translated from Japanese. Izumi needs a job but also can’t be bothered working (so relatable). Haruka had breast cancer and is always bringing it up. Katō works at the convenience store and looks after her family. Mito is being pressured to marry her boyfriend and Sumie is desperate for somewhere to live.

This was really good and I enjoyed every story in this collection. It felt very timely even though it was first published in Japan twenty-five years ago. I enjoyed reading this and really connected to it. The stories were relatable and the translation was really good and felt seamless. I would recommend this collection and I enjoyed how it depicted life in Japan for these women.

Sharp, darkly funny and piercingly perceptive, The Dilemmas of Working Women is a remarkable portrayal of five women navigating modern life in all its messy, contradictory complexity. Originally published in Japan in the 1990s and newly translated into English, this book retains a powerful resonance, demonstrating how little has changed in the pressures and compromises women face.

Each character—Izumi, Haruka, Katō, Mito and Sumie—carries her own burden, from job insecurity and societal judgement to toxic relationships and isolation. Yamamoto’s writing balances humour and poignancy, never shying away from discomfort but treating each woman’s experience with empathy and wry observation. The result is an unflinching but compassionate account of working womanhood, full of vivid moments that feel instantly recognisable and painfully relatable.

This is not a book of grand resolutions or triumphant transformation. It’s about surviving the everyday, making imperfect choices, and occasionally, daring to hope. It’s a quietly radical reminder that the personal is always political, and that dignity can be found in the smallest acts of resistance.

Read more at The Secret Book Review.

I found that there was quite a lot that I could relate to in the stories, despite Japanese culture being so strange and so different from anything I've experienced. Elements I found unsettling were the love hotels and the all night manga cafés.

The individual stories dealt with women at an impasse and how they navigated it, but as with so many short stories they fizzled out leaving me wanting to know more.

‘The Dilemmas of Working Women’ wasn’t what I was expecting. From the description, I thought it would be one story showing the experiences of five interconnected working women, or maybe a set of stories where the lives of these women in some way overlap—like the narratives in films such as ‘He’s Just Not That Into You’. Instead, it is a collection of five completely distinct and unrelated short stories, the first four about the experiences of Japanese women—some of whom work, some of whom don’t—and the last one about a working Japanese man.

Despite not matching my expectations, it was an enjoyable read. I found the experiences of the female characters very relatable—which perhaps says something about how much (or how little) has changed for women in recent times, given that this book was written 25 years ago. However, I didn’t find any of the stories to be particularly memorable. The mundanity of their lives is a key feature of the stories, but it is also what makes them somewhat forgettable.

The inclusion of the final story, which is told from the perspective of a man and is more about his experience than that of Sumie, the woman named in the book’s summary, didn’t work for me. It felt like it didn’t belong with the others. I also find the title of the book odd, and perhaps a little misleading, as the stories don’t focus on women’s experiences at work and the dilemmas they face aren’t related to their work either. I think had the summary and title more accurately captured what this book is, I might have been less likely to read it. Still, I did enjoy it, and the stories are undoubtedly well-written.

If you’re in the mood for short stories set in Japan, where the overall feeling is one of ennui and mundanity and the focus is on the expectations placed on women in society and the troubles in their love lives, you should give ‘The Dilemmas of Working Women’ a try. If you’re looking for a gripping novel with strong female protagonists, perhaps give it a miss.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Fumio Yamamoto and Little, Brown Book Group for the ARC. My review will be posted on Instagram, Amazon UK, Goodreads and The StoryGraph closer to publishing date.

Five ordinary women.

Izumi needs a job.
Mito needs to decide whether to marry her boyfriend or break up with him
Kato needs to get through just one shift at work without being harrassed
Haruka needs to stop talking about the cancer she had
And Sumie just needs somewhere to live

Wonderful