Chiyo Uno

Chiyo Uno (1897–1996) was a Japanese author and magazine editor whose life was as outrageous and as fiercely lived as anything in her fiction. A serial lover who was notoriously frank about her relationships and desires, she became a celebrated figure precisely because she refused to live by the constraints placed on Japanese women of her era — and her fiction carried that same refusal into its treatment of female desire and independence.

Her most admired work, Confessions of Love (Iro zange, 1933), draws on her tumultuous relationship with the painter Seiji Tōgō to create a psychologically complex portrait of obsession and self-destruction. She also founded and edited Style magazine, one of Japan's most influential fashion publications, and designed kimono. Uno was a genuinely singular figure: artist, editor, designer, and very much her own woman.