Mieko Kawakami

Kawakami was born in Osaka on August 29, 1976 to a working-class family.^[1][2]

Kawakami worked as a hostess and bookstore clerk before embarking on a singing career.^[3] Kawakami released three albums but quit her musical career in 2006 to focus on writing.^[4]

Kawakami made her literary debut as a poet in 2006 and she published her first novella, Watakushiritsu In Hā Matawa Sekai, in 2007.^[5] Before winning the Akutagawa Prize in 2008 for Chichi to Ran, Kawakami was known in Japan primarily as a blogger.^[3] At its peak, her blog received over 200,000 hits per day.^[6]

In 2010, Kawakami's first full-length novel, Heaven, won the 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.^[7]

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.^[8] The edited volume of these interviews, titled Mimizuku wa Tasogare ni Tobitatsu (みみずくは黄昏に飛びたつ; Haruki Murakami: A Long, Long Interview) was published in 2017. Kawakami was selected as a 2016 Granta Best of Young Japanese Novelists for her short story "Marie's Proof of Love".^[9]

Kawakami's novel, Ms Ice Sandwich, made the shortlist of the 2018 Grand Prix of Literary Associations.^[10] In 2019, Kawakami published Natsu Monogatari (Summer Stories), a considerably expanded version of her novella Chichi to Ran. It received the 73rd Mainichi Publication Culture Award.^[11] In 2020, the English translation of Natsu Monogatari was published under the title Breasts and Eggs by Europa Editions.^[12] Katie Kitamura reviewed it for The New York Times, observing, "Mieko Kawakami writes with a bracing lack of sentimentality, particularly when describing the lives of women."^[13]

Her first full-length novel in Japanese, Heaven, was translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd and published in English in 2021 by Europa Editions.^[14] It was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize.^[15]

Her 2022 book, All the Lovers in the Night, translated into English by Sam Bett and David Boyd and published by Europa Editions, was a finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction.^[16][17] and will be adapted into a film by Yukiko Sode [ja] starring Yukino Kishii and Tadanobu Asano and released in 2026.^[18]

David Boyd's English translation of her novel, Sisters in Yellow, originally published by Chuokoron-Shinsha in 2023, was announced for a spring 2025 release by Picador.^[19]

Kawakami's writing often employs Osaka dialect, which is 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.^[4] Her writing is known for its poetic qualities and its insights into the female body, ethical questions, and the dilemmas of modern society.^{[citation needed]}

Japanese author, Haruki Murakami, called her his favorite young novelist^[20] and has described her writing as "ceaselessly growing and evolving".^[21][22]

Kawakami lives in Tokyo, Japan.^[23] She is married to the author Kazushige Abe, with whom she has a son.^[24]