Mitsuyo Kakuta (, ''Kakuta Mitsuyo'', born 8 March 1967) is a Japanese author born in

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of To ...

.IFO
Retrieved 23 May 2016
/ref> She has been engaged in translating into modern Japanese the 11th-century proto-novel '' The Tale of Genji'' by

Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court in the Heian period. She is best known as the author of '' The Tale of Genji,'' widely considered to be one of the world's first novels, written in Japanese between abou ...

(紫式部).

Prized works

Mitsuyo Kakuta made her debut while still a student at

Waseda University , abbreviated as , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the ''Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō'' by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the school was formally renamed Waseda University in 1902. The university has numerou ...

's Faculty of Literature, with ''Kōfuku na yūgi'' (A Blissful Pastime). It won her the Kaien Prize for New Writers in 1990. After producing two well-received novels in 2002, ''Ekonomikaru paresu'' (Economical Palace) and ''Kūchū teien'' (Hanging Garden), she went on to win the Noma Literary New Face Prize and the

Naoki Prize The Naoki Prize, officially , is a Japanese literary award presented biannually. It was created in 1935 by Kikuchi Kan, then editor of the ''Bungeishunjū'' magazine, and named in memory of novelist Naoki Sanjugo. Sponsored by the Society for the ...

for ''Woman on the Other Shore'' in 2004. ''The Eighth Day'', translated into English in 2010, received the 2007 Chūō Kōron Literary Prize and has been made into a television drama series and a film. Both her 2012 books – her novel ''Kami no tsuki'' and her short-story volume ''Kanata no ko'' (The Children Beyond) – were prizewinners. Altogether she has written over 80 works of fiction.

Current events

Mitsuyo Kakuta is married to the fellow writer

Takami Itō is a Japanese author who won an Akutagawa Prize in 2006. Biography Itō was born in Kobe, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. As a middle-school student, he was a classmate of Ken Hirai. He later graduated from Waseda University. Prizes * Bungei Prize ...

. She stated in an interview in October 2015 that she is translating the 11th-century classic '' The Tale of Genji'' into modern Japanese and this was likely to take her three years. The first two volumes of the adaptation have now been published. In the same interview she mentioned Shuichi Yoshida,

Yōko Ogawa is a Japanese writer. Her work has won every major Japanese literary award, including the Akutagawa Prize and the Yomiuri Prize. Internationally, she has been the recipient of the Shirley Jackson Award and the American Book Award. '' The Memory ...

and

Kaori Ekuni Kaori Ekuni (江國香織 ''Ekuni Kaori'', born 21 March 1964) is a Japanese author. She was born in Setagaya, Tokyo. Her father is Japanese haiku poet and essayist, Shigeru Ekuni. Works In Japan, she was dubbed the female Murakami. Her numero ...

as contemporary Japanese writers whom she could recommend. She is a member of

Red Circle Authors Red Circle Authors is a British publishing house based in London that specialises in Japanese fiction. Origins Red Circle Authors was set up in 2016, by Richard Nathan and Koji Chikatani, to showcase Japan’s best creative writing. The Gutai ...

, a curated group of contemporary Japanese authors.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kakuta, Mitsuyo Japanese translators Japanese women novelists Waseda University alumni 1967 births Living people Naoki Prize winners