is a Japanese novelist. She is a 1965 recipient of the

Akutagawa Prize The is a Japanese literary award presented biannually. Because of its prestige and the considerable attention the winner receives from the media, it is, along with the Naoki Prize, one of Japan's most sought after literary prizes. History The ...

Early life

Tsumura was born in the capital city of

Fukui is a Japanese name meaning "fortunate" or sometimes "one who is from the Fukui prefecture". It may refer to: Places * Fukui Domain, a part of the Japanese han system during the Edo period * Fukui Prefecture, a prefecture of Japan located in ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. Her mother died when she was nine years old. Two years later, she moved to

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

. Her father, a silk weaver, died when she was sixteen. Between 1947 and 1948, at the age of nineteen, Tsumura ran her own dressmaking shop, employing three other seamstresses. Despite the success of her business, she closed the shop to attend Gakushuuin Women's Junior College, where she studied literature and edited the student literary magazine. She met her husband,

Akira Yoshimura was an award-winning Japanese writer. Internationally he is best known for his novels ''Shipwrecks'' and ''On Parole''. Life and work Yoshimura was the president of the Japanese writers' union and a PEN member. He published over 20 novels, o ...

(1927 - 2006), while contributing to the literary magazine at his college. Tsumura graduated in 1953 and married soon after.

Career

Tsumura was nominated for 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 ...

in 1959 for her short story, "Kagi" (Key), which she wrote for the Bungakukai magazine. She was awarded the

in 1965 for her short story "Gangu" (Playthings), a story about an expectant mother who is disappointed by her husband's indifference in their pregnancy. In 1972, Tsumura's short story, "Saihate" (The Farthest Limit) won the Shincho Prize. It was based on Tsumura's personal experience after the collapse of her husband's business. Tsumura's 1983 biographical novel, "Shirayuri no kishi" (Precipice of a White Lily) is about a poetess from Tsumura's native Fukui; Tomiko Yamakawa (1879 - 1909). Tsumura's novel, "Ryuuseiu" (A Meteoric Shower) won the Women's Literature Prize in 1990. It depicted the

Boshin War The , sometimes known as the Japanese Revolution or Japanese Civil War, was a civil war in Japan fought from 1868 to 1869 between forces of the ruling Tokugawa shogunate and a clique seeking to seize political power in the name of the Imperi ...

from the perspective of a 15-year-old girl. She is a member of the

Japan Art Academy is the highest-ranking official artistic organization in Japan. It is established as an extraordinary organ of the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs (文化庁, Bunkacho) in the thirty-first article of the law establishing the Ministry of Ed ...

and was recognized as a

person of cultural merit is an official Japanese recognition and honor which is awarded annually to select people who have made outstanding cultural contributions. This distinction is intended to play a role as a part of a system of support measures for the promotion of ...

in 2016.

Bibliography

Type of literary work denoted in parentheses.

Translated works

Tsumura's 1969 short story ''"Yakoodokei"'' (夜光時計) was translated under the title "Luminous Watch." It is included in the anthology ''This Kind of Woman: Ten Stories by Japanese Women Writers'' by Elizabeth Hanson and Yukiko Tanaka. ''"Gangu''," the short story that won Tsumura the Akutagawa Prize, was translated by Kyoko Evanhoe and Robert N. Lawson for the ''Japan Quarterly'' in 1980 under the name "Playthings."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tsumura, Setsuko 20th-century novelists 1928 births Japanese writers Akutagawa Prize winners Japanese women novelists Living people