Mieko Kawakami


Mieko Kawakami is a Japanese writer and poet from Osaka. Her work has won prestigious Japanese literary awards in several genres, including the 138th Akutagawa Prize for her novella Chichi to ran , the 2013 Tanizaki Prize for her short story collection Ai no yume to ka , and the 2008 Nakahara Chūya Prize for Contemporary Poetry for Sentan de, sasuwa sasareruwa soraeewa.

Career

Kawakami worked as a bar hostess and bookstore clerk before embarking on a singing career. Kawakami released three albums and three singles as a singer, but quit her singing career in 2006 to focus on writing.
Before winning the Akutagawa Prize in 2008 for Chichi to ran, Kawakami was known in Japan primarily as a blogger. At its peak, her popular blog received over 200,000 hits per day.
Kawakami's first full-length novel, titled Hevun, won the 2010 Murasaki Shikibu Prize for Literature. In 2012 an English translation of her short story "March Yarn" appeared in March was Made of Yarn, a collection of essays and stories about the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.
In 2016, she was selected as Granta Best of Young Japanese Novelists 2016 for her short story "Marie's Proof of Love".
From 2015 to 2017, Kawakami conducted a series of interviews with Haruki Murakami, in which she notably asked him about women and sexualization in his novels. The edited volume of these interviews, titled Mimizuku wa Tasogare ni Tobitatsu was published in 2017.
Mieko Kawakami's novel, Ms Ice Sandwich, made the shortlist of the 2018 edition of the Grand Prix of Literary Associations.
In 2020, Breasts and Eggs was published from Europa Editions and has attained high acclaim. The New York Times ran the great review of the book by Katie Kitamura on the day of publication and it reads "Mieko Kawakami writes with a bracing lack of sentimentality, particularly when describing the lives of women."

Writing style

Kawakami's writing often employs Osaka-ben, a distinctive Japanese dialect spoken in Osaka and surrounding cities. She also incorporates experimental and poetic language into her short stories and novels, citing Lydia Davis and James Joyce as literary influences. Celebrated Japanese author Haruki Murakami called her his favorite young novelist and has described her writing as "ceaselessly growing and evolving."

Recognition