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The Moga Who Conquered Japan: The Life and Style of Uno Chiyo (Part 1)

Her life defied every rule of what an early Showa woman was expected to be—yet instead of a cautionary tale, she became a legend.

Inventing the Modern Girl

Chiyo Uno photographed in 1932 wearing a kimono of her own design.

Uno Chiyo probably wouldn’t have described herself using something as vulgar as the 1920s label of “Modern Girl.” And yet, at the height of her career, she embodied many of the traits most harshly criticized in the moga. Her love life was scandalous, drifting from one man to the next. She was fiercely independent and bohemian, worlds away from the Confucian ideal of the “Good Wife, Wise Mother” that structured Japanese society. But not in a political or intellectual sense—she never cast herself as a progressive or a woman fighting for rights. She cut her hair short, adored makeup, took pride in her appearance, and had an unshakable love for fashion. In many ways, she represented everything society claimed to despise in these so-called delinquent women. And yet, she was beloved—eventually enshrined as a cultural icon.

Chiyo's First Transformation

Chiyo was born in 1897 in the rural town of Iwakuni, in Yamaguchi Prefecture. Her mother died when she was very young, and she was sent to live with her father’s relatives—an affluent family that had made its fortune in sake brewing. When her father later remarried a much younger woman, Chiyo returned to his household.

Despite his privileged background, Uno’s father was a reckless playboy who squandered the family fortune on drinking and gambling. And he wasn’t the charming kind—he ruled the household with a heavy hand, especially over Chiyo and her five younger half-siblings. Ironically, it was her young stepmother—the type fairytales usually cast as villains—with whom Chiyo formed a warm, almost sisterly bond.

At 14, with his health failing, her father arranged for her to marry her cousin—the son of her stepmother’s sister. The marriage fell apart in just ten days and was never consummated; he had no desire to marry and avoided the family home—where Uno waited—like the plague. A few years later, her father passed away. With the strict figure she had once obeyed without question now gone, Chiyo felt free for the first time.

Around that time, Chiyo—who had grown up thinking she was ugly—discovered the transformative power of makeup. Her father had often mocked her dark complexion, telling her no one would ever want to marry her. She avoided mirrors entirely, convinced there was nothing worth seeing. But one day, stepping out of a hot bath, the mirror was fogged with steam. As it cleared, she caught sight of a pretty girl staring back at her. For a moment, she didn’t recognize her own reflection. That fleeting moment changed everything. Though she still disliked her skin tone, she realized she could use white powder to soften and reshape her appearance. That was the beginning of her lifelong love affair with cosmetics.

She would later say that, once she’d learned a few tricks, she quickly became popular—that her transformation from an ugly duckling to a swan came down to nothing more than technique. It’s a story that would go on to resonate with generations of fashion-conscious Japanese women. In many ways, Uno Chiyo’s personal narrative prefigured the core promise of every Japanese fashion magazine: with the right products and enough effort, you too can become beautiful. It also echoed the ever-present ganbarou spirit—do your best, and beauty will follow.

A century before gyarus perfected their tan skin, false lashes, and circle lenses—or hostesses mastered the art of illusion with hairpieces and highlighter—Chiyo was already spending 45 minutes a day on her face. In one of her many autobiographies, she details her routine: after washing her face, she’d apply a beauty cream from Club Cosmetics— one of the most influential cosmetic brand at the time—then blend in Club’s white cream powder all the way down to her neck. She’d warm a large peony brush with hot water, gently sweep it across her face to set the powder, then dab off the excess with a dry glaze cloth. She finished the look with rouge on her cheeks, lipstick, and carefully drawn eyebrows—done with a scorched matchstick, since brow pencils weren’t yet common.

And just like that, she became a gorgeous young lady, turning heads everywhere she went. At that point in her life, Chiyo was happy—confident in her looks, close to her stepmother and siblings, and finally in control of the image she presented to the world.

Chiyo Uno’s First Scandal

Next, Chiyo set her sights on something more than beauty—she needed money. With her father no longer in the picture, her (step)mother worked tirelessly to support the family, and Chiyo, the older sibling, had to help. Instead of going to high school, she took a job as a substitute teacher at the local elementary school—one of the few respectable professions available to women in her town. And, as with everything she committed to, she excelled. Her students adored her, and she found genuine satisfaction in the work.

But Chiyo was never meant to be a demure wallflower. She arrived at school in flamboyant kimonos, her skin glowing with makeup, radiating the confidence of someone who knew exactly how she wanted to be seen. Naturally, it didn’t go unnoticed—and not everyone was pleased.

Then came the scandal. Chiyo developed a crush on a fellow teacher and, in true Chiyo fashion, decided to boldly pursue him. Staff romances were strictly forbidden, and gossip spread quickly. To head off a full-blown scandal, the principal informed her that she would have to go. To save face, the school told students she was moving to Tokyo at the end of the term. She was expected to bow out quietly.

But Chiyo was never one to exit quietly. On her final day, she arrived in an outfit that, by her own admission, was wildly inappropriate for a teacher—her hair styled like a geisha’s, tied with a pink ribbon, her look meticulously polished to perfection. All she wanted was for the man she liked to look at her and think, “Isn’t she pretty? Isn’t she cute?”

The principal, stunned by her appearance, panicked. He hid her in the janitor’s closet, insisting she couldn’t appear in front of the children like that. And so, she never got to say goodbye.

Big hair, don't care: Second from the left, Chiyo with her voluminous hair during her substitute teacher days.

And yet, that anecdote—equal parts tragic, comic, and glamorous—is exactly why Chiyo continues to resonate with generations of Japanese women. She didn’t play by the rules. She ruffled feathers. But what girl hasn’t dreamed of walking into a room dressed to the nines just to make one person stop and stare? Who hasn’t fantasized about breaking every rule just to chase a crush? In so many ways, Chiyo lived out the impulses others were too afraid to act on. She was bold, unapologetic, and endlessly stylish—the kind of woman many secretly wish they could be.

To escape the fallout, Chiyo left for Seoul, Korea, where she found domestic work with a Japanese family. But her heart remained elsewhere. She continued writing love letters to the man she’d fallen for, only to be met with silence. When he finally replied, it was to end things. Chiyo—never one to tolerate ambiguity—returned to Japan to confront him face to face. He made his feelings clear: he wanted nothing to do with her. The encounter turned even more dramatic when he noticed she was carrying a knife—intended as a souvenir for her mother—and shoved her out violently.

She was heartbroken—for a moment. And then, just like that, she moved on.

The Breakout

Back in her hometown, she spotted a striking young man while walking through the city center. It was the younger brother of her former husband—the cousin she had married for ten days at the age of fourteen. Technically, they weren’t blood relatives, and in any case, the past was the past. They fell for each other quickly. He was six months older but, since he had pursued higher education, still in high school. When he was accepted into a prestigious university in Tokyo, they got permission from their families and moved to the capital together.

Life in Tokyo wasn’t easy. They had to work hard to get by. He took a job with the government, and she did whatever she could—tutoring, helping at a magazine, even waiting tables at a Western-style restaurant for a few weeks. That restaurant happened to sit across the street from the offices of Chūō Kōron, Japan’s most important literary magazine. It didn’t take long for Chiyo to charm the city’s intellectuals and editors that used the restaurant as an extension of the office. She worked there for barely two weeks, but left a strong enough impression to inspire characters in several stories—including one by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa.

She never stayed at a job for more than a few weeks—too proud to endure the humiliations they often involved. She had bigger dreams: perhaps becoming an actress like her idol, Matsui Sumako. Or maybe a writer. That dream grew even stronger after rubbing shoulders with the creme de la creme of the literary world at the restaurant.

Despite her busy Tokyo life, duty called. Her partner finished school and took a job at a bank in Sapporo, so they moved north. There, she played the role of dutiful wife—until she saw a newspaper ad for a fiction contest. She’d always loved literature, had informally been part of literary projects and had been praised for her writing before. She entered. She won first place.

The winning story, Painted Face (Shifun no kao, 1921), is a subtle, layered portrait of a café jokyu invited to the horse races by a male patron. Lacking the proper outfit, she leans into makeup and rehearsed gestures to dazzle him. But once she arrives, her excitement curdles into insecurity as she’s outshined by a confident, glamorous woman at his side. It’s a tale brimming with the emotional complexity of Taishō-era womanhood.

Chiyo wasn’t surprised by her win—she had never lacked confidence in her talent—but she was stunned by the prize money. That’s when she realized: literature could pay. Really well.

Emboldened, she submitted a piece to Chūō Kōron—the very magazine headquartered across from the restaurant where she once worked, and one known for catapulting new authors to instant fame (it didn’t hurt that the editor had nursed a crush on her back when she waited his table). When she didn’t hear back, she hopped on a train to Tokyo to follow up in person. To her surprise, they had already published it—and handed her a generous royalty check on the spot. With money in hand, she spent the day shopping for the flashiest kimono she could find, then returned home in style. Her mother and siblings met her at the station in a rickshaw—an expensive and conspicuous form of transport in her hometown—and as they rolled through the streets, all eyes turned. Everyone saw it: Chiyo had made it. She gave her family a share of the winnings and headed back to Tokyo to thank the editor who had launched her career.

There, fate intervened again. The editor, Takita Chōin, greeted her with a smile: “What a coincidence! Look who’s here.” He introduced her to another young writer—Shirō Ozaki, who had taken second place in the contest she won. She thought he was cute. Sparks flew. A new romance began. And with that, Chiyo left Hokkaido behind. She never even returned to settle things with her (now ex-) husband.

When asked if she regretted how she left things, Chiyo admitted only one concern: the dishes she’d left in the sink. She had assumed she’d be back soon and feared the cold might crack them. But she never saw those dishes—or that life—again.

The Rise of a Stylish Modern Author

By 1923, she was divorced and living with Ozaki, who she would marry officially three years later. They moved to Magome, a quiet village on the outskirts of Tokyo, then known as a haven for writers and artists. Chiyo was one of them now—a published, paid, modern woman.

A young Uno Chiyo during her marriage with Ozaki.

Their whirlwind romance had already made the newspapers, turning them into a literary “it couple.” But it wasn’t just the speed of their relationship or the fact that she’d left a husband behind that caused a stir. Chiyo was a year older than Ozaki—a small gap, but enough to raise eyebrows in a society where older women with younger men were still taboo. Ever image-conscious, Chiyo wanted to do something to look younger. So she cut her hair.

It was the mid-1920s, and the bob was everywhere. Mogas—modern girls—were embracing it as a symbol of liberation, casting off centuries of long, untouched hair for a sleek, Westernized silhouette. The short cut came before Western clothes, before anything—it was the gateway to modern womanhood. Chiyo wasn’t the first to adopt it, but she was among the most influential. Her bold new look didn’t just shave a few years off her image—it set off a chain reaction in Magome. Other women followed suit, including, famously, the wife of poet Hagiwara Sakutarō, who chopped her hair, then, drunk on her new look and sense of freedom, eloped with an 18-year-old student—leaving her husband and children behind.

At first, married life in Magome was everything Chiyo had hoped for. She described their home as a “fashionable salon” where writers, poets, and artists gathered late into the night, drinking sake and gossiping about literature. But soon, Chiyo grew restless. She began taking trips to an onsen in Izu—both for a change of pace and to focus on her writing.

It was at that hot spring, popular with Tokyo’s literary glitterati, that she met Kajii Motojirō, a handsome young novelist with a delicate constitution—he had tuberculosis. And, as anyone familiar with Chiyo’s story might guess, she had a hard time resisting a pretty face.

In her profile of Chiyo Uno titled Modern Girls, writer and translator Phyllis Birnbaum quotes an unnamed Japanese writer friend who insisted Uno should be understood in the broader context of Japanese literature:

“Our fiction since The Tale of Genji always has a hero drifting from one woman to the next. Uno-san took the male role—she went from man to man. And you also sense that she didn’t choose them for their minds, but because they were handsome—just as men have always chosen women in our books.”

A lot of Chiyo’s works were semi-autobiographical. In her essays and stories, she gave readers front-row seats to a glamorous, impulsive, emotionally unfiltered life. She followed her whims. Her love life was guided purely by passion. And in doing so, she became a star among female readers across Japan—many of whom lived vicariously through her.

Now, Chiyo always insisted her relationship with Motojirō was platonic. She claimed she remained loyal to Ozaki, despite the two living apart. But rumors spread. And the whispers were enough for Ozaki to end things. In 1928, just as the Shōwa era was beginning, they divorced. Ozaki rebounded quickly and, in true mobo fashion, married a café jokyū he met at Ginza’s famed Café Lion.

Even so, Chiyo remained a positive figure in Ozaki’s life, as expected from the beloved heroine she represents in the public sphere. Decades later, he wrote:

“When I married Uno Chiyo, I was able to end my long life of wandering and enter a life where I could devote myself to writing. She was blessed with excellent qualities as a writer, but at the same time, as a housewife and wife, she was sincere and devoted. I can say that it was she who built the foundation of my life as a writer... Uno Chiyo opened my literary eyes. She cast a ray of light on my mind’s eye, which had no confidence and was wandering aimlessly through feelings of inaction. I would like to state that very clearly.” (Forty-Six Years of Novels, May 1964, Kodansha)

Bandages, Bloodstains and Parisian Chic

Uno Chiyo in 1936 alongisde some of the early Showa's most influential female authors: (from the left) Hayashi Fumiko, Sata Ineko, Uno Chiyo and Yoshiya Nobuko.

Newly single, Chiyo was poised to reinvent herself once again.

Around that time, a sensational scandal gripped Tokyo’s art world: the painter Seiji Tōgō, recently returned from France, had attempted a lovers’ suicide with his partner. They both survived—barely. His lover was committed to a mental institution by her wealthy family, and his reputation lay in ruins. In 1930s Japan, such acts, although almost a daily occurrence, were condemned as signs of madness, but they also carried an undeniable allure. Tragic, transgressive love had its own mystique. Chiyo was enthralled.

She was planning to include a lovers’ suicide in the novel she was writing and used it as a pretext to meet Tōgō for research. According to her later recollections, when they met, he still had a bandage wrapped around his neck—something she claimed “drove her mad.” He invited her to his home and showed her the bloodstained tatami. For Chiyo, it was irresistible. The encounter became an affair.

Their relationship burned bright. They built an elegant home together—borrowing money along the way—and Chiyo devoted herself to supporting his art, even sidelining her own writing to help him rebuild his reputation. But after four years, around 1934, Tōgō left her to reunite with the same woman he had once tried to die alongside.

While they were going through their separation, Chiyo was serializing Iro Zange (Confessions of Love), a novel that drew heavily from Tōgō’s real-life experiences. In it, she described his suicide attempt and personal struggles just as he had once recounted them to her—or so she claimed. And gossip sells. When the book was finally published in 1935, it became a massive bestseller—her most commercially successful work up to that point.

Besides giving her the biggest hit of her career, the relationship also transformed her style.

To please Tōgō, she abandoned the heavy white makeup and adopted instead a more natural face and “Parisian chic” way of dressing, making Western clothes a bigger part of her life. Her beauty routine—once a symbol of personal reinvention and beauty-as-armor—gave way to oil-based cosmetics and a subtler, more European look. Tōgō, in turn, began wearing kimono to please her.

Which is why Uno Chiyo is a perfect embodiment of the moga—the “modern girl.” She lived its contradictions. She loved makeup, fashion, and independence, but deep down, she remained traditional. She cut her hair to look younger for Ozaki. She embraced Western clothes for Tōgō. She didn’t start trends—but she made them fashionable. She wasn’t radical; she was romantic, aspirational, and unapologetically feminine.

This set her apart from the atarashii onna—the “New Women” of the previous generation. Figures like Raichō Hiratsuka, the anarchist feminist who founded Seito, wore Western clothes as early as 1919—over a decade before Chiyo—not for style, but as a political act. Hiratsuka fought to remake society and demand equality between the sexes.

Uno admired and was inspired by Raichō—but she didn’t follow her path. She wasn’t trying to overthrow the system; she simply wanted to live beautifully within it. She divorced, pursued what she wanted, and succeeded in a male-dominated world—always with an eye toward romance, beauty, and joy.

As Barbara Sato notes, Uno’s readership stretched far beyond Tokyo’s literary elite. Her fans included rural housewives bound by duty, tending clay stoves and enduring daily battles with in-laws. Raichō spoke of revolution. Chiyo offered escape—a path to personal transformation through beauty, style, and emotion.

Uno wasn’t a feminist writer. Her early heroines didn’t seek liberation—they sought romantic fulfillment. For them, success meant being desired, not independent. In that sense, Uno, like most of Japanese society, was conservative. But she made her conservatism glamorous. She chose handsome, accomplished men. She was meticulous about her appearance—not out of vanity, but because beauty was her joy. “Not dressing up is worse than stealing,” she once said. She never appeared without makeup and went to the salon weekly. Fashion and cosmetics weren’t superficial—they were tanoshisa, pure delight.

Like any true moga, she adored movie stars. Her idol was American actress Kay Francis, and by the late 1930s, Uno’s famously shaped eyebrows were a clear homage. But by being an oshare girl, Uno also reshaped what it meant to be a woman writer (joryū sakka). In the Taisho era, literature was a men’s club. By the Showa era, that had changed so much that beloved TV host Tetsuko Kuroyanagi recalled that, alongside actress, being a josei sakka had become one of the most desirable professions. Chiyo helped make it that stylish.

And speaking of stylish professions—what did she do after breaking up with Togo? She launched a fashion magazine, of course.

To be continued…

Part 2

#moga #modern girl #taisho era #uno chiyo #japanese literature #20s japan