A short life of the author
Minae Mizumura (b. 1951) was born in Tokyo and moved to the United States at age twelve. She studied French literature at Yale and taught at Princeton, Stanford, and the University of Michigan.
Life and Career
Shishōsetsu from left to right (1995) — written in a mixture of Japanese and English, with the text running in both directions on the page — is her debut: a formally inventive novel about living between languages and cultures.
Honkaku shōsetsu (A True Novel, 2002) — a reimagining of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights set in postwar Japan, told through multiple narrators and spanning decades — won the Yomiuri Prize. It is a vast, meticulously constructed novel about class, love, and the relationship between Japanese and Western literary forms.
Haha no isan (Inheritance from Mother, 2012) — about a woman caring for her dying mother — won the Osaragi Jirō Prize.
Major Works and Themes
Mizumura writes about the tension between Japanese literary tradition and Western influence, about language, class, and family. Her nonfiction work The Fall of Language in the Age of English (2008) argues for the preservation of national literary languages against English dominance.
Key Works
- A True Novel (2002)
- Inheritance from Mother (2012)
Collecting Mizumura
Japanese originals (Chikuma Shobō, Shinchōsha) are the primary collected form. English translations (Other Press) bring $15–$30. Mizumura continues to publish.