Download or read book Beauty in Disarray written by Harumi Setouchi and published by Tuttle Publishing. This book was released on 1993 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Japan's Taisho era (1912-26) was a period of widespread unrest and radical change. Socialists were demanding the end of the class system; anarchists were calling for the overthrow of the government; a feminist movement had announced the birth of the "new woman." In the middle of all this turbulence was a woman barely out of high school, Noe Ito. Ito's life is the stuff of legend - alienation, rebellion, passion, and persecution, all in twenty-eight short years. She was married three times and gave birth to seven children; she was at the center of a scandal when another woman stabbed her lover because he had started living with Ito. Despite the turmoil of her private life, Ito spent a year as editor of the magazine Seito, one of the most revolutionary publications of the day. Was Ito a selfless "new woman" or a selfish hedonist, a rare woman ahead of her time or a mere victim of her times? Noe Ito is a complex character whom no two readers will view the same way, but all will agree that author Harumi Setouchi has created a remarkable portrait of an exceptional woman.