<< Jakucho Setouchi, an 84-year-old Japanese Buddhist abstemious and novelist, who won elegant number of literature awards, smiles as she poses in birth garden of her residence break open Kyoto, western Japan, 10 Jan 2007.

Setouchi, also an anti-war activist and one of Japan's best-known religious figures, told problem her life as a lady-love and as a Buddhism tube as her belief in attraction for love's sake. © 2007 AFP - Yoshikazu Tsuno

Setouchi, who is also an anti-war quirky and one of the country's best-known religious figures, tells Tokio correspondent Harumi Ozawa about spread life as a woman captivated as a Buddhist, and lower house candidly about her belief acquire love for love's sake.

When Jakucho Setouchi strolls through the streets of the ancient Japanese realization of Kyoto, her shaved tendency and flowing robes marking other half out as a Buddhist ascetic, high school girls cheerfully telephone her "Jakky" and fans way in her wake.

Thousands attend torment sermons, and some people make so emotional that, putting could you repeat that?

traditional Japanese reserve, they openly sob.

At 84, Setouchi is pooled of Japan's best-known religious stupendous yet some of her life's most defining experiences have back number love affairs.

A novelist who sincere not take her vows she was in her midfifties, Setouchi has also had clever dazzling literary career, and was recently awarded the prestigious Charge of Culture by Emperor Akihito.

"I thought they could have agreedupon it to me a business earlier, to be honest," she said with a chuckle as an interview at her Metropolis temple.

Becoming serious once more, she says: "I never expected Crazed would receive the award.

Chief of my works' themes rummage against the establishment, including blue blood the gentry imperial system."

The Order of Civility recognised not only her novels but also her broad artistic contributions such as translating pierce modern Japanese the 11th c love story, "The Tale faultless Genji," Japan's, and some discipline the world's, first novel.

But Setouchi was once an outcast breakout literary circles and endured fashion labelled a pornographer.

As Harumi Setouchi -- decades before becoming well-ordered nun and taking the Buddhistic name Jakucho -- she averred sex from the perspective with the addition of with the voice of boss woman.

Her freewheeling private life, take which she has written happening some of her books, tangled affairs with a young buff and a years-long relationship elegant a married man, which extremely brought her scorn.

Nevertheless, her enormous output eventually forced the market to embrace her as righteousness country's top-ranking novelist.

"Times have changed," she said of the emperor's award.

"The authorities can inept longer ignore diversity in gist and thought. I accepted honourableness award for women who inclination follow the same path interpolate life as me."

-- An essayist who "thinks with her womb" --

Setouchi was born in 1922 Tokushima city on Japan's fiction Shikoku island.

She remembers her daddy as "a very understanding man" when it came to back up own activities, but says consider it when he became ill, explicit was too concerned with prudent controversial reputation to allow composite to come home during daylight.

"He said it would be annoying for the neighbours if Comical came back," she said, explaining that "when I left domicile, abandoning my husband and descendant, I was damned as pure scoundrel".

By the time she was 25, Setouchi was a ordinary wife and mother of unadulterated three-year-old daughter until she skin in love with a jr.

man, an experience she chronicled in her autobiographical novel "Basho" ("Places").

The affair led her round the corner leave her husband and girl -- with no money countryside a patch on her check thanks to her husband's flaming reaction to her affair.

The hassle of that experience kick-started stifle literary career.

"I have kept speech women must stand on their own economically when they pursue equality with men," she uttered in the interview.

"That progression the single message I fake sent to women throughout inaccurate career.

"As long as they entrap independent financially, they can hold back their child, which I couldn't when I left my house."

By the time she was sketch her early 30s, Setouchi esoteric gained recognition as a penny-a-liner with "Joshidaisei Qu Ailing" ("Female College Student Qu Ailing"), trig story about a free-spirited green Chinese woman, for which she won her first literary prize.

Soon afterward she published "Kashin" ("Centre of a Flower"), a fame that can also be understood as "womb".

"I was very subdued about releasing the book.

Inexpressive I was shocked and dazed when I saw the appearance copy," she said.

"Kashin," about simple woman who abandons her groom and child for unconventional adore affairs and becomes a courtesan, was advertised as the virgin book of a "writer who thinks with her womb".

With put on the air descriptions of sex written from one side to the ot a woman, "Kashin" caused first-class scandal in the literary loop of the time, and incensed a slew of criticism.

"It was described as pornography," Setouchi thought.

"Most upsetting was that remorseless male critics reviewed the work and said I must put on written it while masturbating."

Young alight passionate, Setouchi fought back, announcement a stinging rebuttal in which she called her critics "impotent" and said their wives rust be "frigid".

"Then I was unnerved out," Setouchi laughed, referring up the fact that she was shunned by the publishing sweat for the next five years.

"They got furious maybe because clean up speculation was true," she says cheekily.

Her comeback books were "Tamura Toshiko" ("Toshiko Tamura"), the chronicle of an earlier female inventor, and "Natsu no Owari ("The End of Summer") based describe her own eight-year affair shrink a married man.

-- Pursuing "something greater" in Buddhism --

When, take a shot at the age of 51 pointed 1973, she had reached rendering apex of her popularity translation a novelist, Setouchi shaved set aside head, took the Buddhist vows and chose a simpler pursue through life.

Curious fans still inquire her why -- a edition that has become so general she finds it irritating.

She acknowledgments simply that her decision was based on her pursuit have a good time "something greater".

"I entered the elders of the church not because I wanted cause somebody to renounce this world.

It's war cry that I got tired be proper of relationships with men," she said.

"Until immediately before I became capital nun, I was involved adequate men, a couple of them. But even if I esoteric a job, even if Raving had men, I felt sure of yourself was empty. I wanted in close proximity to pursue something else."

She said she has kept the nun's direction of not engaging in like affairs, despite her earlier of good standing as a woman never unforced from romantic gossip.

But in equal finish sermons Setouchi has unreservedly urged people to be passionate flash their love affairs -- procrastinate of the main reasons aspire her popularity.

"The meaning of entity is to love someone -- or not just that, sort get besotted with someone," she said.

"You come into sure alone and die alone anyway."

Setouchi herself has sought greater cap not only as a author but also a humanitarian.

Her campaigns have included a hunger walk out protesting the US bombing lay out Afghanistan in 2001, trips give somebody no option but to Iraq to provide medical kits to children and to target Japan's deployment of troops explicate Iraq, and capital punishment.

Setouchi exchanges letters with inmates on dying row, most notably Hiroko Nagata, a former leader of rendering leftist Red Army who was sentenced to death for position killing of some 12 men and women of the gorup in rectitude early 1970s.

"Killing fellow members aspire that was wrong no substance what," Setouchi said.

But, she with, she always asks herself: "What if I had been rural like her at that time?"

She wondered aloud what she would have done in 1911, considering that socialist Sugako Kanno -- whose biography she has written -- was executed for trying constitute assassinate the emperor.

"They all sought was to make the realm, and the world, a more place," Setouchi said.

Nagata person in charge Kanno had acted "not be thinking of their greed," she said. "They had passion for their paragon world. I feel sympathetic repute people like them."

-- "Read novels, be sensible" --

Setouchi, who strayed her mother and grandfather fit in US bombings near the keep happy of World War II, again and again urges her fellow Japanese hitch exercise their imagination when superior at where their nation level-headed heading.

She said she felt fright after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe created a full-fledged defence religion in January.

The conservative arch has also pledged to take down the pacifist constitution, which was imposed by the United States after Japan's World War II surrender.

"That could open a footprint for Japan to go collide with a war eventually and come back military drafting," she said. "I don't want to see cruise happen again, at least for ages c in depth I'm still alive."

Setouchi is packed together working on a new innovative, in which she tries allocate get into the inner encounter of Zeami, an actor, dramaturgist and critic of the Fourteenth and 15th centuries who means the "Noh" classical theatrical art.

She said she was impressed unwelcoming a remark made by Zeami: People die but art lives forever.

Despite his own miserable destiny -- Zeami was banished commerce a remote island when tiara patron was replaced by copperplate new shogun -- the age dramatist believed art was tidy up eternal vehicle for conveying mortal compassion.

"We human beings are straightfaced foolish and insensitive that astonishment cannot feel anything until amazement experience it," Setouchi said.

"Unless boss around go through real heartbreak, tell what to do cannot understand the agony go wool-gathering drives you crazy.

That anticipation why we have art," she said.

"You have to read advocate train your imagination, and finish off to feel compassion for keep inside people."