Yumiko Kurahashi
Yumiko Kurahashi (倉橋 由美子, Kurahashi Yumiko, October 10, 1935 – June 10, 2005) was a Japanese writer. Her married name was Yumiko Kumagai (熊谷 由美子, Kumagai Yumiko), but she wrote under her birth name.
Her work was experimental and antirealist, questioning prevailing societal norms regarding sexual relations, violence, and social order. Her antinovels employed pastiche, parody, and other elements typical of postmodernist writing.
Early life and studies
Kurahashi was born in Kami, Japan, the eldest daughter of Toshio and Misae Kurahashi.[1] Her father was a family dentist in the town of Kami in Kōchi Prefecture on the island of Shikoku. After one year studying Japanese literature at the Kyoto University, she moved under pressure from her father to Tokyo to obtain a certificate as a dental hygienist and for medical training. Following her completion of the requirements to take the state exam for medical practice, however, she instead entered the Department of French Literature at Meiji University, where she studied under the guidance of Masanao Saito and attended lectures by prominent Japanese post-war literary figures such as Mitsuo Nakamura, Kenji Yoshida, and Ken Hirano. During her university years, Kurahashi was enthusiastically introduced to the body of modern literature, reading Rimbaud, Camus, Kafka, Blanchot, and Valéry. Her thesis was devoted to an analysis of Sartre's treatise Being and Nothingness.
Literary beginnings and controversy
While studying for her masters degree, Kurahashi made her literary debut in 1960 with the publication in the university magazine of the story The Communist Party (パルタイ), an acute satire on the left-wing sentiment commonplace among students at that time. The story was commended by Ken Hirano in his review in the Mainichi Shimbun. The story was reprinted, and after her story End of Summer (夏の終り) was also published, Kurahashi was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize. Although she didn't win, she was considered, along with other new writers debuting at the same time - Takeshi Kaiko, Shintaro Ishihara, and Kenzaburō Ōe - to be ranked highly among the so-called "third wave" generation of young Japanese writers.
Kurahashi and Kenzaburō Ōe have some biographical similarities: like Kurahashi, Ōe also was born in 1935, grew up on Shikoku, and moved to Tokyo, where he studied French literature, did graduate work on Sartre, and debuted in his student days with politically tinged short stories which drew the recognition of Ken Hirano. At a certain point, though, their paths diverge. Ōe went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature while the path chosen by Kurahashi led to her ostracization by the Japanese literary world.
Kurahashi's 1961 novel (in fact antinovel) Grim Journeys (暗い旅), written in the formal second person caused much controversy among critics and led Jun Etō to accuse her of plagiarism. In Etō's view, Kurahashi's novel simply imitated the earlier novel Change by the French writer Michel Butor. A fierce debate broke out in the press; Kurahashi's defenders were joined by Takeo Okuno, while those joining Etō in condemning Kurahashi included Kenzaburō Ōe and Koji Syrah (the translator of Sartre's Nausea). Whether influenced by the dispute or by the death of her father in 1962, after this Kurahashi left the university and gradually fell out of public view.
Later life and works
In 1964 Kurahashi married Tomihiro Kumagai, who was then working as a producer for the Japan Broadcasting Corporation. Despite significant health problems, in 1966 she went to study at the University of Iowa in the United States, where she spent about a year.
In 1969 Kurahashi published the phantasmagoric and dystopian novel Adventures of Sumiyakista Q (スミヤキストQの冒険), which received mixed reviews. A dramatic turnaround in her work was heralded by her 1971 novel Floating Bridge in a Dream (夢の浮橋), which, however, was ignored by the critics. But her 1984 work Cruel Fairy-tales for Adults (大人のための残酷童話), full of twisted black lowdown tales, became her most popular work during her lifetime. In 1987 she was awarded the Izumi Kyōka Prize for Literature for her massive antiutopian work Journey to Amanon (アマノン国往還記).
Last years
In her later years, in response to her deteriorating health, Kurahashi almost ceased creative writing and focused instead on translating children's literature. Her last work was a new translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince. She is also widely known for her translations of Shel Silverstein.
Yumiko Kurahashi died at the age of 69 of dilated cardiomyopathy. The disease was incurable, but Kurahashi consistently refused even those operations which could have prolonged her life.
References
- Napier, Susan J. (1996). The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature: The Subversion of Modernity. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-12458-4.
- Sakaki, Atsuko (1999). Recanonizing Kurahashi Yumiko: Toward Alternative Perspectives for "Modern" "Japanese" "Literature". Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press.
- Vernon, Victoria V. (1988). "The Sibyl of Negation: Kurahashi Yumiko and "Natsu no owari"". Daughters of the Moon: Wish, Will, and Social Constraint in Fiction by Modern Japanese Women. Berkeley: University of California, Institute of East Asian Studies. ISBN 978-0-912966-94-6.
- 小鹿 糸 (1983). "倉橋由美子論 : 反世界への降下". 日本文學誌要. 29. Hosei University: 62–74.
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Notes
- ^ Chieko Irie Mulhern (1994). Japanese women writers: a bio-critical sourcebook. Page 199. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-313-25486-9, ISBN 978-0-313-25486-4.