Mieko Kawakami

Challenging every preconception about storytelling and prose style, mixing wry humor and riveting emotional depth, Kawakami is today one of Japan’s most important and best-selling writers. She exploded onto the cultural scene first as a musician, then as a poet and popular blogger, and is now an award-winning novelist.Breasts and Eggs paints a portrait of contemporary womanhood in Japan and recounts the intimate journeys of three women as they confront oppressive mores and their own uncertainties on the road to finding peace and futures they can truly call their own.It tells the story of three women: the thirty-year-old Natsu, her older sister, Makiko, and Makiko’s daughter, Midoriko. Makiko has traveled to Tokyo in search of an affordable breast enhancement procedure. She is accompanied by Midoriko, who has recently grown silent, finding herself unable to voice the vague yet overwhelming pressures associated with growing up. Her silence proves a catalyst for each woman to confront her fears and frustrations.On another hot summer’s day ten years later, Natsu, on a journey back to her native city, struggles with her own indeterminate identity as she confronts anxieties about growing old alone and childless.

Hailed as a bold foray into new literary territory, Kawakami’s novel is told in the voice of a 14-year-old student who subjected to relentless torment for having a lazy eye. Instead of resisting, the boy chooses to suffer in complete resignation. The only person who understands what he is going through is a female classmate who suffers similar treatment at the hands of her tormentors.These raw and realistic portrayals of bullying are counterbalanced by textured exposition of the philosophical and religious debates concerning violence to which the weak are subjected.Kawakami's simple yet profound new work stands as a dazzling testament to her literary talent. There can be little doubt that it has cemented her reputation as one of the most important young authors working to expand the boundaries of contemporary Japanese literature.

Fuyuko Irie is a freelance copy editor in her mid-thirties. Working and living alone in a city where it is not easy to form new relationships, she has little regular contact with anyone other than her editor, Hijiri, a woman of the same age but with a very different disposition. When Fuyuko stops one day on a Tokyo street and notices her reflection in a storefront window, what she sees is a drab, awkward, and spiritless woman who has lacked the strength to change her life and decides to do something about it.As the long overdue change occurs, however, painful episodes from Fuyuko’s past surface and her behavior slips further and further beyond the pale. All the Lovers in the Night is acute and insightful, entertaining and engaging; it will make readers laugh, and it will make them cry, but it will also remind them, as only the best books do, that sometimes the pain is worth it.

A quixotic and funny tale about first love – from the Akutagawa Prize-winning author.Ms Ice Sandwich seems to lack social graces, but our young narrator is totally smitten with her. He is in awe of her aloofness, her skill at slipping sandwiches into bags, and, most electric of all, her ice-blue eyelids. Every day he is drawn to the supermarket just to watch her in action. But life has a way of interfering – there is his mother, forever distracted, who can tell the fortunes of women; his grandmother, silently dying, who listens to his heart; and his classmate, Tutti, no stranger to pain, who shares her private thrilling world with him.Tender, warm, yet unsentimental, Ms Ice Sandwich is a story about new starts, parents who have departed, and the importance of saying goodbye.

Rising star Mieko Kawakami reaches new heights in this pacy, thrilling novel, a Japanese Breaking Bad, in which a group of friends fight for freedom, independence, and survival in Tokyo of the 1990s, a world rapidly dividing into haves and have-nots.All of them are fleeing something. Growing up without a father, Hana’s tired of the pity in her classmates’ eyes, and finds a flashier mother figure in Kimiko. Kimiko is older than Hana's mother but seems much younger, chatting easily about school and boys and wanting a better life. Fate throws them together with two more young women—bruised but not broken by life. Together the four set out to remake their lives, fighting predatory lenders, organized criminals, and plain bad luck as they open a bar called Lemon.Keeping the business going, and trying to take care of each other, forms the core of this enrapturing novel. It is a story of startling reversals and vivid portraits of the matriarchy of Tokyo nightlife and its adjacent criminal underclasses. From the bar owners to the aging hostesses to the young street touts coaxing people off the street to places like Lemon, everyone wants a chance at renewal, but can everyone get it?Narrated by Hana in Kawakami’s trademark evocatively poetic style and paced like a noir, Sisters in Yellow will be the literary blockbuster of the season. This epic of friendship and betrayal is the kind of book one longs to return to when away from a world until itself, and a book that makes you think while it produces immensities of feeling. It is a major novel that, like so many of the best recent phenomena—from Donna Tartt to Hanya Yanigahara—explores how we survive (or don't) together.

Listening Length: 4 hours and 42 minutesAward-winning Japanese author and poet Mieko Kawakami brings Ashes of Spring, a collection of short stories set in everyday life in Japan just before the pandemic lockdown. Kawakami’s stories straddle the line between delicate and beautiful human connection and the brutality of human nature. This poignant collection vividly captures the world we created shortly before it was put on pause, the characters at the center, painfully real. As we emerge five years later, Kawakami offers a stark reminder of our own fragility.

People believe, Marie thinks, even when there’s no proof. You believe because you imagine. But is imagination enough to live by?

みんな遠くへ行ってしまう。本当の自分を知っているのにね――。四年ぶりの長篇小説! 麦彦とヘガティー、思春期直前の二人が、脆くはかない殻のようなイノセンスを抱えて全力で走り抜ける。この不条理に満ちた世界を――。サンドイッチ売り場の奇妙な女性、まだ見ぬ家族……さまざまな〈あこがれ〉の対象を持ちながら必死で生きる少年少女のぎりぎりのユートピアを繊細かつ強靭無比な筆力で描き尽くす感動作。

"I want to welcome you into my world of fiction with "Chandelier", a story about a woman who spends all her time in a department store. Not working there. Just being there. It's a story that looks at how we live and die, how the past can shift with our memories, and how it can infiltrate the present in unexpected ways. It brings me such joy to celebrate the important work of independent bookstores and share "Chandelier" with you." - Mieko Kawakami

『騎士団長殺し』誕生秘話、少年期の記憶、フェミニズム、世界的名声、そして死後のこと……。芥川賞作家にして、10代からの熱心な愛読者が、村上春樹のすべてを訊き尽くす。誰もが知りたくて訊けなかった創作の源泉とその素顔を、鮮烈な言葉で引き出した貴重な記録。

Short story published in Granta: The Online Edition as part of their 20 for 2020 series, featuring twenty timely and exciting new works from the Japanese.Available to read online at magazine's website.‘During sex, Narumi would picture herself as steamed rice being turned into mochi rice cakes.’

Mieko Kawakami invites us to revisit one of J. D. Salinger's classic short story most beloved short stories. In their introduction, Ted Goossen and Motoyuki Shibata, editors of Monkey Business, the magazine where this translated story first appeared, write, "We love the idea of the three-year-old Sybil Carpenter in 'A Perfect Day for Bananafish' as an old woman at the end of her life, with the memory of that strange young man, Seymour Glass, flickering in and out of her consciousness. Mieko is a wonderful singer-songwriter as well as one of Japan’s major novelists, and we can hear the beautiful cadence of her poetry in Hitomi Yoshio’s great translation."About Recommended Reading:Great authors inspire us. But what about the stories that inspire them? Recommended Reading, the latest project from Electric Literature, publishes one story every week, each chosen by a great author or editor. In this age of distraction, we uncover writing that's worth slowing down and spending some time with. And in doing so, we help give great writers, literary magazines, and independent presses the recognition (and readership) they deserve.About the author:Mieko Kawakami (b. 1976) is a novelist, poet, singer, and actress. Her awards include the Akutagawa Prize, the Nakahara Chūya Poetry Prize, and the Murasaki Shikibu Literary Prize. She has published five books of fiction as well as two books of poetry, and her latest book is Dreams of Love, Etc., a collection of short stories. About the Translator:Hitomi Yoshio (b. 1979) received her doctorate from Columbia University in 2012 and currently teaches Japanese literature at Florida International University in Miami. In 2011 and 2012 she was an indispensable interpreter at the Monkey Business International 1 and 2 launch events in New York and Toronto. About the Guest Editor:Monkey Business International is the in-translation offspring of the Tokyo-based magazine Monkey Business, which was founded in 2008 by Motoyuki Shibata, one of Japan’s most highly regarded men of letters. Monkey Business International aims to translate and present a wide array of established and emerging authors, showcasing the best of contemporary Japanese literature. With the generous support of the Nippon Foundation, A Public Space is the publisher and partner of Monkey Business International. Monkey Business and A Public Space first conceived of Monkey Business International when Shibata curated a portfolio of Japanese literature in the debut issue of A Public Space.

35歳ではじめての出産。それは試練の始まりだった！ 芥川賞作家の川上未映子さんは、2011年にやはり芥川賞作家の阿部和重さんと結婚、翌年、男児を出産しました。つわり、マタニティー・ブルー、出生前検査を受けるべきかどうか、心とからだに訪れる激しい変化、そして分娩後の壮絶な苦しみ……。これから産む人、すでに産んだ人、そして生もうかどうか迷っている人とその家族に贈る、号泣と爆笑の出産・育児エッセイ！

あのとき、ふたりが世界のすべてになった。なにげない日常がゆらいで光を放つ瞬間をとらえた、心ゆさぶる7ストーリーズ。

どんな夜にも光はあるし、どんな小さな窓からでも、その光は入ってくるのだから――。真夜中、解体されゆく家に入りこんだわたしに、女たちの失われた時がやってくる。三月の死、愛おしい生のきらめき、ほんとうの名前、めぐりあう記憶……。人生のエピファニーを鮮やかに掬いあげた著者の最高傑作。

デビューと同時に激しめに絶賛された文筆歌手が魅せまくる、かくも鮮やかな言葉の奔流!リズムの応酬!問いの炸裂!“わたし”と“私”と“歯”をめぐる疾風怒涛のなんやかや!とにかく衝撃の、処女作。第137回芥川賞候補作。

女子の世界は妖しくて愛しくて我武者羅でときどき、こわい。文筆歌手・未映子の三年に渡る日記。

よるべなき虚空をゆく一個の疑問符は何を貫き、何に融けるのか?“少女”という憑坐を得て、いま言葉はうたい、さわぎだす。圧倒的新星の伝説的デビュー作を含む7編、ここに爆誕。

誰にも見せない日記のように、誰かに語りかけている。芥川賞作家が日常から零れ落ちる言葉たちを拾いあつめた、自由律で不定型、新しいかたちのエッセイ集。

Please Note That The Following Individual Books As Per Original ISBN and Cover Image In this Listing shall be Dispatched Mieko Kawakami 3 Books Collection Set (Heaven, All The Lovers In The Night, Breasts and Eggs): In Heaven, a fourteen-year-old boy is tormented for having a lazy eye. Instead of resisting, he chooses to suffer in silence. The only person who understands what he is going through is a female classmate, Kojima, who experiences similar treatment at the hands of her bullies. Providing each other with immeasurable consolation at a time in their lives when they need it most. All The Lovers In The Fuyuko Irie is a freelance proofreader in her thirties. Living alone in an overwhelming city and unable to form meaningful relationships, she has little contact with anyone other than her colleague, Hijiri. But a chance encounter with a man named Mitsutsuka awakens something new in her. Through their weekly meetings, Fuyuko starts to see the world in a different light. Breasts and On a hot summer’s day in a poor suburb of Tokyo we meet three thirty-year-old Natsuko, her older sister Makiko, and Makiko’s teenage daughter Midoriko. Makiko, an ageing hostess despairing the loss of her looks, has travelled to Tokyo in search of breast enhancement surgery. She's accompanied by her daughter, who has recently stopped speaking.

作家、女優、映画監督、映画、タレント……豪華26人が「恋文」を競作！史上最高の執筆陣が放つ、心を鷲づかみにする名文集あなたはラヴレターを書いたことがありますか？恋心ほどやっかいで愛しいものはない。かつての同級生、年齢の離れた伯父、昔自分を弄んだ男、はたまたオンビニエンスストアなど、贈り先は多種多様。史上最高の執筆陣による、他の追随を許さない異色の恋文アンソロジー！〈アンソロジー執筆者 以下、掲載順〉吉本ばなな 川上未映子 二階堂ふみ 西川美和 壇蜜 小池真理子横尾忠則 山本容子 俵万智 桐野夏生 小島慶子 姫野カオルコ山中千尋 松尾スズキ 加藤千恵 松田青子 村田沙耶香春風亭一之輔 砂田麻美 中江有里 島田雅彦 岩下尚史高樹のぶ子 皆川博子 橋本治 長塚京三

初めてのファストファッションに驚嘆し、マノロ・ブラニクで全力疾走、つい手に取ってしまう「豹柄」に大阪人を実感……6年間の流行の変遷と、それでも変わらない嗜好性。インタビューも特典収録して読みどころ満載のファッションエッセイ!

見上げる雪空に響く賢治のことば。文豪「ドス」を貫く心揺さぶる「ラズ」の力。たらい回しにされるおばさんクレーマーの心中と、怒髪天を衝いた新幹線車内の衝撃。小説家の日常は諸事ぐるぐる渦巻いてやがてあの謎へむかう……。オモロイからロマンティックまで、週刊新潮人気連載を厳選したエッセイ集。『ぜんぶの後に残るもの』『人生が用意するもの』を合本化し改題したオリジナル文庫を電子化。

小説・詩・エッセイなど繊細かつ巧みな言葉で世界を切りとり物語を紡ぐ、日本を代表する作家初の総特集。特別書き下ろし他充実の1冊[特別創作]シンシア黄昏王国現代語訳 裏紫(樋口一葉 著)[単行本未収録作品]ほかの誰よりも最高の気分あしたまた昼寝するねみえるわ[ロングインタビュー]べつの仕方で、聞き手:穂村弘[対談]✕永井均 反出生主義は可能か ーーシオラン、べネター、善百合子✕多和田葉子 からだ・ことば・はざま✕イーユン・リー 「孤独」でしか描けないこと✕蓮實重彦 始まる、始まる、始まる、ーーあたらしい書き手とことばに震えるために◎山崎まどか 選川上未映子のおめかしエッセイダッフルは誰の思い出?/お化粧品売り場でひかるもの/髪の思春期/キャロルとナンシー/散財にまつわる二、三の事情◎川上未映子が選ぶ、9人の笑わない女と10の偏愛 構成:岩川ありさ[トリビュート創作]「ヘヴン」高山羽根子 なおされた目を確かめに「先端で、さすわ さされるわ そらええわ」最果タヒ 夜のほうれい線「夏物語」大森静佳 空洞『おめかしの引力』佐藤文香 伊勢丹奇譚[エッセイ]高橋源一郎 「詩集」って、書いてない町田康 川上未映子の小説について岸本佐知子 ミエコさんとワタシ沼野充義 早稲田大学坪内逍遥大賞奨励賞のころ古谷田奈月 編集者・川上未映子蜂飼耳 饒舌な書法が細部を知らせる江國香織 マジカル黒田夏子 対話集『六つの星星』からひろった鍵のいくつか藤田貴大 そういう手紙だとしてサム・ベット インストラメンタルに合わない文体ーー川上未映子の文学を英訳するに当たってデビッド・ボイド 声を分かち合うこと山本充 未来を映す子どものエネルギー北原美那 早稲田文学増刊 女性号について[私の1冊]夏帆/村田沙耶香/今橋愛/田中慎弥/鈴木杏/町屋良平/文月悠光/武田砂鉄[論考]亀山郁夫 存在の根源に達するということーー川上未映子の原点と現在江南亜美子 不安と光の作家、川上未映子岸政彦 川上未映子にゆうたりたい都甲幸治 文字と身体――川上未映子の小説斎藤環 入れ子問題、あるいは新しい「ことばの社会」椹木野衣 ゴンドラは運ぶ生殖と繁殖を乗せて――『乳と卵』と『夏物語』を繋いで◎川上未映子作品を読み解く10のキーワード 小澤みゆき妊娠/出産・初潮・月経・花・甘・髪・歯・夜・夏・音楽・審問◎川上未映子 主要13作品解題 2006→2019+担当編集者は語る◎全著作一覧

「世界のみんなが気になるところ」を論じ、あの三月の記憶を語り、日常の落し穴に微苦笑しながら、人生のきらめく欠片を掬い取る。いま最も注目される作家が、奔放自在・融通無碍・愛嬌満点な感性と日本語を駆使して、読者の意表を突きまくる最新エッセイ六十余篇。日本経済新聞＆週刊新潮好評連載、待望の単行本化。

丈夫な剛毛に思い悩んだ顛末を綴る「髪の思春期」、受賞するのかしないのか、決定を待つあいだのこたえる感じ「芥川賞のパーン。」、憂鬱に臨んだクリスマスが涙とともに一変した「母とクリスマス」……。“とくべつな色合いをもつとくべつな瞬きであった”２年間に発表された、きらきらしい58篇のエッセイを収録。

人の日記というのは、わたしはとても好きだけれど、こわいものだなとも思います。―恋愛小説や朗読にまつわる謎、キャベツやホットケーキとの瑞々しい出会い、妊娠・出産・子育てがもたらした疾風怒涛の日々…いつかは必ず失われてしまう時間を、優しくにぎりしめるように綴った著者唯一の日記的エッセイ三部作、ついに完結。

رواية «الجنّة»، التي وصلت ترجمتها الإنكليزيَّة إلى القائمة القصيرة لجائزة مان بوكر الدوليَّة عام 2022، تقع أحداثها في مدرسة يابانيَّة حيث يلقى صبيٌّ في الرابعة عشرة من عمره صنوفًا من العذاب على أيدي زملائه لأنَّه أحول، ومع ذلك، يستكين الصبيّ ولا يقاوم، بل يعاني في صمت. كوليما، زميلته في الصف، هي الوحيدة التي تفهم معاناته لأنَّها أيضًا لا تسلم من تنمُّر الآخرين ومعاملتهم السيِّئة. يصبحان صديقيْن حميميْن يواسي أحدهما الآخر، ويتبادلان الرسائل بعيدًا عن أعين الآخرين. لكن، ما جوهر هذه الصداقة وكُنْهها إذا كان ما يجمعهما هو الخوف من الآخرين؟هذه الرواية على سهولتها ظاهريًّا، كثيرة الطبقات، عميقة المعاني، تجمع بين الحِدَّة والرَّقَّة، وتقدِّم شهادة بيِّنةً على مَلَكَ