New Delhi, Aug. 12 -- Japan is infamous for its gender inequality. Few women occupy positions of political and corporate leadership. They overwhelmingly shoulder the burden of housework and child care.

This year, the World Economic Forum ranked Japan 118 out of 148 nations for gender parity.

The short-story collection "The Dilemmas of Working Women" by the late novelist Fumio Yamamoto tells about the people inhabiting this reality. Released on Tuesday, it's being published in English for the first time.

The original was a best seller in Japan and won the country's prestigious Naoki literary prize in 2001. After the author's death in 2021, the novelist Yu Nagira wrote in the Asahi newspaper that Yamamoto quietly and realistically depict...