Enchi Fumiko was the daughter of Ueda Kazutoshi, a prominent professor of Japanese linguistics at Tokyo University. Even as a small child, she accompanied her father to Kabuki performances, and from her grandmother she heard stories based on literature of the Tokugawa period (1603–1867). Her first interest was in the theatre, and she effectively began her literary career in 1926, when she submitted a play to a competition. About this time she embraced left-wing political beliefs that proved to be at odds with her privileged family background. She subsequently married, unhappily, and for a time withdrew from literary activity.
The short story “
Himojii tsukihi” (1953; “Days of Hunger”) earned Enchi her first public acclaim. More success came with the novel Onnazaka (1957; “Female Slope”; Eng. trans. The Waiting Years), an account of a woman of the Meiji period (1868–1912) who defers to all her husband’s wishes, even choosing mistresses for him. The novel, based in part on the life of Enchi’s grandmother, is beautifully written. It not only won Enchi a literary prize but freed her from the dreariness of her own life and enabled her to embark on a literary career. Onnamen (1958; “Female Mask”; Eng. trans. Masks) depicts, by invoking the various female masks used in the Noh dramas, different unhappy women. Enchi’s early background in Japanese classical literature is revealed in her allusions not only to the Noh plays but to the 11th-century classic Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji).
The novel Namamiko monogatari (1965; “The Tale of Namamiko”; Eng. trans. A Tale of False Fortunes) purports to be a manuscript from the Heian period (794–1185) that describes the rival courts of the two consorts of Emperor Ichijō. It is a tour de force, possible only because of Enchi’s special knowledge of the period. Her translation of The Tale of Genji into modern Japanese, undertaken between 1967 and 1973, has been widely praised.