Yūko Tsushima

Template:Use dmy dates Satoko Tsushima (30 March 1947 – 18 February 2016), known by her pen name Yūko Tsushima (津島 佑子 Tsushima Yūko), was a Japanese fiction writer, essayist and critic.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Tsushima won many of Japan's top literary prizes in her career, including the Izumi Kyōka Prize for Literature, the Noma Literary New Face Prize, the Noma Literary Prize, the Yomiuri Prize and the Tanizaki Prize. The New York Times called Tsushima "one of the most important writers of her generation."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Her work has been translated into over a dozen languages.<ref name=:2>Template:Cite news</ref>

Early life

Tsushima was born in Mitaka, Tokyo, the third child (younger of two daughters) of famed novelist Osamu Dazai and Michiko Ishihara, a teacher at a girls' school.<ref>The Osamu Saga: The Autobiographical Fiction of Dazai Osamu, Phyllis I. Lyons, University of Chicago, 1975, p. 29</ref><ref>A Biographical and Literary Study of Dazai Osamu, James A. O'Brien, Indiana University, 1969, p. 68</ref> Her father committed suicide when she was one year old;<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> she later drew on the aftermath of this experience in writing her short story "The Watery Realm".<ref name=:0>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>World Authors 1985-1990, ed. Vineta Colby, H. W. Wilson, 1995, p. 900</ref>

Career

While attending Shirayuri Women's University she published her first fiction. At age 24 she published her first collection of stories, Carnival (Shaniku-sai). A prolific writer, she was the winner of several literary prizes.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 1972 her story Pregnant with a Fox (Kitsune wo haramu) was a runner-up for the Akutagawa Prize. She was awarded the Izumi Kyōka Prize for Literature in 1977 for Kusa no Fushido (Bedchamber of Grass),<ref name=izumi>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and the first annual Noma Literary New Face Prize for Hikari no ryōbun (Territory of Light) in 1979.<ref name=noma>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 1983 she was awarded the Kawabata Yasunari Literature Prize for her short story Danmari ichi (The Silent Traders),<ref name=kawabata>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and in 1986 she won the Yomiuri Prize for her novel Yoru no hikari ni owarete (Driven by the Light of the Night).<ref name=yomiuri>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 1998 she was awarded the 34th Tanizaki Prize and the 51st Noma Literary Prize for her novel Hi no yama – yamazaruki (Mountain of Fire: Account Of A Wild Monkey).<ref name=tanizaki>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name=noma /> In 2002 she won the Osaragi Jiro Prize for Warai ookami (Laughing Wolf).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Writing style

Tsushima's work is often characterized as feminist, though she did not apply this label to her own work.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=:1 /><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Her writing explores the lives of marginalized people, usually women, who struggle for control of their own lives against societal and family pressures.<ref name=:1>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> She has cited Tennessee Williams as a literary influence.<ref name=:3>Template:Cite news</ref> Unlike many of her contemporaries, whose writing about women tended to assume a nuclear family, Tsushima wrote about women who had been abandoned by family members.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Her stories, several of which draw on her own experience as a single mother,<ref name=:3 /><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> focus on the psychological impact of abandonment on those left behind.<ref name=:0 /><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Works translated into English

• Child of Fortune (寵児, Chōji, 1978) (translation by Geraldine Harcourt)
• Territory of Light (光の領分, Hikari no ryōbun, 1979) (translation by Geraldine Harcourt)
• Woman Running in the Mountains (山を走る女, Yama wo hashiru onna, 1980) (translation by Geraldine Harcourt)
• The Shooting Gallery & Other Stories (射的ほか短編集, 1973–1984) (translation by Geraldine Harcourt)
• A Sensitive Season (発情期)
• South wind (南風)
• The Silent Traders (黙市)
• The Chrysanthemum Beetle (菊虫)
• Missing (行方不明)
• The Shooting Gallery (射的)
• Clearing the Thickets (草叢)
• An Embrace (抱擁)
• Laughing Wolf (笑い狼, Warai Okami, 2001) (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies, 73; translation by Dennis Washburn)
• Of Dogs and Walls (犬と塀について, inu to hei nitsuite , 2018),(translation by Geraldine Harcourt, Penguin Classics)
• Wildcat Dome(ヤマネコ・ドーム, Yama Neko Domu, 2013),(translation by Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda, Penguin Classics)

External links

• Synopsis of Laughing Wolf at JLPP (Japanese Literature Publishing Project) Template:In lang
• Memento libri: New Writings and Translations from the World of Tsushima Yūko (1947~2016), ed. by Anne McKnight and Michael Bourdaghs, The Asia-Pacific Journal. Japan Focus 16, 12, 2 (15 June 2018)
• Yūko Tsushima, Home Ground, tr. by Geraldine Harcourt, The Asia-Pacific Journal. Japan Focus 16, 12, 3 (15 June 2018)
• A 1970s Japanese Novel Leading the Way to Ferrante by Jiayang Fan, The New York Times (15 March 2019)