Mitsuyo Kakuta
Mitsuyo Kakuta (角田 光代, 1967–) set her sights on becoming a writer from an early age. Her debut novel—Kōfuku na yūgi (A Blissful Pastime), written while she was a university student—received the Kaien Prize for New Writers in 1990. She has been working continuously as an author ever since, never having had to support herself with a separate job. Three nominations for the Akutagawa Prize serve as a measure of the promise with which she was regarded from early in her career. Then, at the encouragement of an editor, she shifted toward the entertainment end of the literary spectrum, where she garnered a much broader readership with works depicting the lives of women in her generation, from their mid-thirties to forties. After publishing two brilliant novels in 2002, Ekonomikaru paresu (Economical Palace) and Kūchū teien (Hanging Garden), she went on to win the Naoki Prize for the second half of 2004 with Woman on the Other Shore (tr. 2007). Her successes continued with The Eighth Day (tr. 2010), which received the 2007 Chūō Kōron Literary Prize and was made into a televised drama series as well as a movie; the book sold more than a million copies, vaulting her into the ranks of Japan's best-selling authors. In 2012 she added to her list of honors by earning the Shibata Renzaburō Award for her novel Kami no tsuki (Paper Moon), and the Izumi Kyōka Prize for her volume of short stories Kanata no ko (The Children Beyond).
Mitsuyo Kakuta is currently working on translating the Tale of Genji into modern Japanese.
(source: BooksFromJapan.jp)
“Shewas afraid of getting too close to anyone. To her, closeness representeda loss rather than a gain.”
“But Aoi found it impossible to fully open herself up to any of hernew friends. She could laugh with them, rant with them, even playat falling in love with them. But there remained a certain line she was loath to let anybody cross, and if someone tried to come closerthan that, she hastily erected a wall, not answering the phone andstaying away from classes until a more comfortable distance reasserteditself.”
“There's that, too, but more than that, what people are sayingabout me right now, it's not really about me, it's about them. It's notmy baggage to carry. Why should I want to shoulder everybody else'sburdens and beat myself up over their problems? I'm not that bighearted.”
“Every country's different.All that happy talk you hear about understanding one anotherand people everywhere being basically the same, it's all a bunchof crap. Everybody's different. And if you don't realize that, you'renever going to experience anything truly new.”
“But to me, it's a wholelot more important to find something that makes you unafraid ofbeing alone, rather than to have so many friends that you wind upbeing terrified of solitude.”
“Something about the way Nanakotalked reminded Aoi of women her mother's age. Women who tookno interest in most of what went on in the world and, within theone tiny little slice of the world they did care about, refused tobelieve that a single shred of ill will or distrust or any other troublingsentiment could exist. The kind of woman she'd seen strikeup conversations with her mother in train stations and tourist spotsas if they were sisters or something. They were friendly as could be,and they'd overwhelm you with kindness. But let anything go wrong,Aoi reminded herself, and they would coldly shove you away almostevery time.”