The Budding Tree Author:Aiko Kitahara This Naoki Prize-winning work is a personal yet precise account of the lives of working women in the Edo period (1600 1868). — In the latter half of the Edo period, the warrior caste was finding itself pushed out of the top echelons of society by the rising merchant class, — and repeated famines swept the countryside. Against this backdrop, a smal... more »l number of women vigorously built themselves independent lives with unusual careers—working as designers of ornamental hairpins, or even scribes—in the male-dominated society of the day. The stories in The Budding Tree recount the conditions in which these women lived.« less