Yōko Ogawa Explained

Yōko Ogawa
Birth Date:March 30, 1962
Birth Place:Okayama, Okayama Prefecture, Japan
Occupation:Novelist, short story writer, essayist
Nationality:Japanese
Period:1980–present
Notableworks:The Housekeeper and the Professor, The Memory Police

is a Japanese writer. Her work has won every major Japanese literary award, including the Akutagawa Prize and the Yomiuri Prize.[1] Internationally, she has been the recipient of the Shirley Jackson Award and the American Book Award. The Memory Police was also shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020.[2]

Some of her most well known works include The Housekeeper and the Professor, The Diving Pool and Hotel Iris.

Background and education

Ogawa was born in Okayama, Okayama Prefecture. Growing up in a family that followed the Konkōkyō religion, she was influenced by her upbringing in a household with deep religious and educational values.[3] She graduated with a degree in literature from Waseda University, Tokyo.[4] When she married her husband, a steel company engineer, she quit her job as a medical university secretary and wrote while her husband was at work.[5] Initially, she wrote only as a hobby, and her husband didn't realise she was a writer until her debut novel, The Breaking of the Butterfly, received a literary prize. Her novella Pregnancy Diary, written in brief intervals when her son was a toddler, won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for literature, thus cementing her reputation in Japan.

She currently lives in Ashiya, Japan.

Career

Since 1988, Ogawa has published more than fifty works of fiction and nonfiction. Much of her work has yet to be translated into English. In 2006, she worked alongside the mathematician Masahiko Fujiwara to co-write "An Introduction to the World's Most Elegant Mathematics", a dialogue on the extraordinary beauty of numbers.

Her work has been published in the New Yorker, A Public Space and Zoetrope.https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/1060719/yoko-ogawa.html?tab=penguin-biography

The 2005 French film L'Annulaire (The Ringfinger) was based in part on Ogawa's Kusuriyubi no hyōhon. Her novel The Housekeeper and the Professor was adapted into the movie The Professor's Beloved Equation. In partnership with Amazon studios, Reed Morano and Charlie Kaufman are set to adapt The Memory Police.[6]

Themes and influences

Kenzaburō Ōe has said, "Yoko Ogawa is able to give expression to the most subtle workings of human psychology in prose that is gentle yet penetrating."[7] Her English translator, Stephen Snyder, has said that “There is a naturalness to what she writes so it never feels forced...Her narrative seems to be flowing from a source that’s hard to identify.”

Frequently, she explores the theme of memory in her works. For instance, The Housekeeper and the Professor follows a mathematics professor who cannot remember anything for longer than eighty minutes, and The Memory Police is about a group of islanders who gradually forget the existence of certain things, such as birds or flowers. Human cruelty features as another prominent theme in her work, as she is interested in exploring what drives people to commit acts of physical or emotional violence. She often writes about female bodies and the woman's role in a family, which has led many to label her as a feminist writer. Ogawa is hesitatant about this label, stating instead that she "just peeked into [the world of her characters] and took notes from what they were doing".

The Diary of Anne Frank has been a significant source of inspiration to her throughout her career. She first encountered the diary as a teenager, and was inspired to start a diary of her own, writing back to Anne as though they were friends. She notes how “Anne’s heart and mind were so rich,” and that “her diary proved that people can grow even in such a confined situation. And writing could give people freedom.”[8] Given its themes of persecution and confinement, The Memory Police in particular is a response to Anne's diary and the Holocaust in general.

While at Waseda University, she was influenced by fellow Japanese authors such as Mieko Kanai, Kenzaburō Ōe, and Haruki Murakami.[9] She also felt influenced by the American author Paul Auster, who she believes “writes a spoken literature—it feels like he’s written down a story someone told him, rather than creating it himself. Shibata’s translation was also very important, but when I read Moon Palace I thought ‘This is how I’d like to write.’ Like I’m just a medium for transferring a story from the world outside.”

Awards and honors

Works in English translation

Novels and novellas

Short stories and collections

Other works

References

  1. Web site: Yoko Ogawa. 2022-02-09. www.penguin.co.uk.
  2. Web site: The 2020 International Booker Prize The Booker Prizes. 2022-02-09. thebookerprizes.com. en.
  3. Green, Ronald S. (2018). Konkōkyō Religious Ideas in the Writings of Ogawa Yōko. Japanese Studies, 38(2), 189–205. https://doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2018.1509670
  4. Web site: August's Author of the Month: YOKO OGAWA - McNally Robinson Booksellers. 2022-02-09. www.mcnallyrobinson.com. en.
  5. Web site: 2019-08-22. Meet the Japanese writer inspired by the wisdom of Anne Frank. https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220507/https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/anne-frank-diary-yoko-ogawa-japanese-writer-a9069086.html . 2022-05-07 . subscription . live. 2022-02-09. The Independent. en.
  6. Web site: Fleming. Mike Jr.. 2020-10-08. Amazon Studios Sets Reed Morano To Direct, Charlie Kaufman To Adapt Yōko Ogawa Novel 'The Memory Police'. 2022-02-09. Deadline. en-US.
  7. Web site: The Diving Pool: Three Novellas . . 5 January 2011.
  8. News: Rich. Motoko. 2019-08-12. Yoko Ogawa Conjures Spirits in Hiding: 'I Just Peeked Into Their World and Took Notes'. en-US. The New York Times. 2022-02-09. 0362-4331.
  9. Web site: 2020-03-27. Writer Ogawa Yōko's Stories of Memory and Loss. 2022-02-09. nippon.com. en.
  10. Web site: Knausgaard heads Independent foreign fiction prize shortlist . The Guardian . Alison Flood . 8 April 2014 . April 10, 2014.
  11. Web site: George Takei, Ocean Vuong win American Book Awards . . September 15, 2020 . December 22, 2023 . December 22, 2023 . https://web.archive.org/web/20231222130810/https://apnews.com/arts-and-entertainment-general-news-8c4cb4c7193622a84620f65a158cdf3b . live.
  12. Web site: 秋の褒章、808人・22団体…紫綬褒章はソフト「金」の上野由岐子さんら最多90人. November 2, 2021. Yomiuri Shimbun.
  13. Web site: RSL International Writers. Royal Society of Literature. December 3, 2023.

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