Aug. 30 marked the day, 28 years ago, that Japan and the world lost a writer of immense importance. Sawako Ariyoshi's works of fiction and nonfiction took up many social issues that came into prominence in the years after her death. To my mind, she is not only one of the greatest authors of modern Japan, but a woman who should be given recognition around the world for her impassioned feminist outlook on the plight of the disadvantaged.

During her lifetime she was a celebrated bestselling novelist whose works were televised and filmed any number of times. She relished the controversy stirred up by the themes she dealt with, themes that were often unpopular at the time, but suffered from insomnia and fatigue, both of which no doubt contributed to the cause of her early death.

Take, for instance, her amazing book about China, "Ariyoshi Sawako no Chūgoku Repōto" (Sawako Ariyoshi's China Report), written on the occasion of her fifth trip to that country. With an anthropologist's scruples and a journalist's scrutiny, she shared what is called sandō seikatsu, or "the three living conditions," with the Chinese people. These are "sleeping under the same roof, eating the same food, and doing the same work," conditions which should be prerequisites for any study of a people.