Query: Japanese books about marriage
Domain: books
Relevant documents:
The Frolic of the Beasts
Beauty and Sadness (novel)
Evidence from documents: The Frolic of the Beasts: The earliest references to the story appear in poem form in the Manyōshū, the oldest and greatest anthology of Japanese poems, compiled during the late Nara period.
Beauty and Sadness (novel): In the present timeline, Otoko is written as a successful painter in her 30s, living with a female lover and protegé, Keiko Sakami. Her art is often described in the novel as a result of her miscarriage after her affair with the older married Oki, in which her baby was born prematurely, where her art was noticed to have some sort of depiction of a baby in one way or another that critics have interpreted to depict grief and longing. When meeting Oki for the first time, she was hesitant to be alone with him, and would instead send her lover to meet and escort Oki away. Although her relationship with Keiko was described as those of lovers, readers have noticed that there were never any explicit description of intimate moments between the two women outside of the indication that they share a bed together. Instead, Otoko’s homosexuality was rationalised in the novel as being the result of her past trauma.