ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the experience of modern women, Ohba Minako, with penetrating sincerity and honesty, but her philosophic profundity in understanding modern life, her intellectual capacity to view her experiences in a historical and social context, and her mastery of the art of fiction render the traditional category of 'female-school literature' totally inadequate to characterize her works. 'The Smile of a Mountain' Witch reveals a devastating perception of human psychology and the logic of people's inner world, presenting traditionally expressionless women as the actual centers of consciousness. In Ohba Minako's recent major novels she searches for the archetypal origins of life and of modern culture, exploring the nature of maternity. She has also written a series of autobiographical novels in which maternity and the search for female identity form the central theme, a theme pursued realistically as well as symbolically in the manner characteristic of her works.
