is a Japanese writer and poet. She is best known for her 2019 novel Breasts and Eggs, an expanded and reworked version of her 2008 novella . Following the international success of Breasts and Eggs multiple of her earlier novels and most of her works since have been translated into English, among many other languages, and distributed internationally. Among them are Heaven (2009) and All the Lovers in the Night (2011), as well as Sisters in Yellow (2023), her first novel released since Breasts and Eggs. Her work is known for her "philosophical explorations of gender, class and ethics in modern society" and slice of life style. Kawakami's books often revolve around women and children.

Kawakami's work has won several literary awards, including the 2007 Akutagawa Prize for Chichi to Ran, the 2009 Murasaki Shikibu Prize for Heaven and the 2013 Tanizaki Prize for her short story collection Ai no yume to ka (愛の夢とか), among many more.

Early life and music career Kawakami was born in Osaka on August 29, 1976, to a working-class family. She was raised by her single mother with the family struggling with poverty. At 14 years old she started work in a factory.

In her early twenties Kawakami worked as a hostess and bookstore clerk while pursuing a singing career and taking correspondence courses in philosophy at Nihon University. She released three J-pop albums but quit her musical career in 2006 to focus on writing. Kawakami reportedly quit her music career after finding out how little artistic control she would have about her work.

Writing career Kawakami made her literary debut in 2006. She published her first novella, My Ego Ratio, My Teeth, And The World, in 2007, earning her a Tsubouchi Shoyo Prize for Young Emerging Writers. Before winning the Akutagawa Prize in 2008 for her second novella, Chichi to Ran, Kawakami was known in Japan primarily as the blogger behind "Critique of Pure Sadness" which she started to promote her singing career. The blog covered a broad range of topics including feminism, Kant and daily observations by the author. At its peak, her blog received over 200,000 hits per day. Chichi to Ran was originally published on that blog. The novella, revolving around a mother and daughter with communication issues and featuring frank discussions of sex and personal relationships, has been called "unpleasant and intolerable" by then-governor of Tokyo Shintaro Ishihara. The book was officially published in 2008 and went on to sell more than 250.000 copies.

Kawakami's fourth novel, Heaven, was published by Kodansha in 2009 and won the Murasaki Shikibu Prize the following year. The book follows the story of an unnamed middle schooler who is brutally bullied by his classmates. According to the author Heaven draws inspiration from Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra and tries to address the "ultimate question of good and evil".

From 2015 to 2017, Kawakami conducted a series of interviews with Haruki Murakami, in which she notably asked him about women and sexualization in his novels. The edited volume of these interviews, titled was published in 2017. In 2019 the two authors hosted a joint reading. Kawakami has described Murakami's place in Japanese literature as special, saying he is the only Japanese author that isn't read from an orientalist perspective by Western audiences. In 2016 Kawakami was featured in Granta Japan and Waseda Bungaku'''s collaborative "Best of Young Japanese Novelists" volume.

In 2019, Kawakami published Natsu Monogatari (Summer Stories), a considerably expanded and completely rewritten version of her novella Chichi to Ran. It received the 73rd Mainichi Publication Culture Award.

2020–present: International breakthrough In 2020, the English translation of Natsu Monogatari was published under the title Breasts and Eggs by Europa Editions. Katie Kitamura reviewed it favorably for The New York Times, observing, "Mieko Kawakami writes with a bracing lack of sentimentality, particularly when describing the lives of women." The novel would go on to achieve both critical and commercial success internationally. Heaven was translated into English and published by Europa Editions in 2021. It was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize. That year the English translation of All the Lovers in the Night, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd, was published by Europa Editions and got to be a finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction.

Kawakami's eighth novel, Sisters in Yellow was originally serialized in the Yomiuri Shinbun, a Japanese newspaper, and published as a book by Chuokoron-Shinsha in 2023. The format invited Kawakami to improvise and write the chapters with little planning. The only thing she set beforehand were the thirteen titles of the book's chapters. An English translation by David Boyd was announced for a spring 2025 release by Picador. The book was eventually published by Knopf in a translation by Hitomi Yoshio and Laurel Taylor in early 2026.

Adaptations Film While, after its initial success, Chichi to Ran was said to be adapted for the screen, no such production ever materialized. The first film adaptation of Kawakami's work would be the 2023 drama Ice Cream Fever directed by based on the 2013 novella Ms Ice Sandwich, the first half of the untranslated Akogare. Chihara's background is in graphic design and he designed multiple book covers for Kawakami in the past. In adapting the seven-page short story into a feature film the two of them worked together, leading to Kawakami being credited as a co-writer on the movie. Ice Cream Fever was preceded by a spin-off short film centered on one of the main movie's characters called I SCREAM FEVER. This was followed by an adaptation of All the Lovers in the Night by starring Yukino Kishii and Tadanobu Asano in 2026. The film was screened at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival.

Theater In December 2025, actor Izumi Aoyagi debuted Wisteria and the Three Women at Lumine 0 in Shinjuku. The one-woman show is based on the short story of the same name. The production marks the fourth collaboration of Kawakami with Takahiro Fujita's theater company Mum&Gypsy.

Writing style and themes Kawakami's prose fiction can be categorized as literary realism, while her poetic work has veered into surrealism and incorporated fantasy elements. In a 2019 interview Kawakami compared prose fiction with poetry and in the light of the 2011 triple disaster highlighted short poems' ability to be memorized in their entirety for "people [who] lost everything". She credits Ichiyo Higuchi as having made the biggest impact on her work, nothing her as "one of the first women to become a professional writer in Japan". In 2022 she said that Higuchi's Takekurabe changed her life.

Feminism Kawakami is an outspoken feminist, seeing it as "a way of life" rather than an ideology, informing both her writing and her interpersonal relationships. On the other hand books like Sisters in Yellow also serve to criticize the short-comings of contemporary feminist movements.

Osaka dialect Born and raised in Osaka, the local dialect features heavily in Kawakami's work. For example, all dialogue in Breasts and Eggs is in Osaka dialect while the rest of the text is written in Standard Japanese.

Personal life Kawakami lives in Tokyo, Japan. She is married to the author Kazushige Abe, with whom she has a son.

Bibliography

Novels + Novels by Mieko Kawakami Title Year Original ISBN Original publisher Notes 2007 Kodansha 2008 Bungeishunjū Originally published in the December 2007 issue of Bungakukai. An excerpt translated by Louise Heal Kawai was published by Words Without Borders in 2012. 2009 Kodansha Published in English by Europa Editions in 2021 (), translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd. 2011 Kodansha Published in English by Europa Editions in 2022 (), translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd. 2015 Shinchosha The first part of two, "Ms Ice Sandwich", was translated into English by Louise Heal Kawai and published by Pushkin Press in 2018 (). 2019 Bungeishunju Published in English by Europa Editions in 2020 (), translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd. 2023 Chuokoron-Shinsha Before publication it was serialized in The Yomiuri Shimbun. Published in English by Knopf in 2026 (), translated by Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio.

Short story collections + Short story collections by Mieko Kawakami Title Year Original ISBN Original publisher Stories Notes 2008 Seikyūsha Poetry collection 2012 Poetry collection 2013 Kodansha The rights for the English translation have been acquired by Picador in 2023, set to be published in 2026. 2022 Shinchosha Published in English as an audio book by Audible in 2025, translated by Hitomi Yoshio. "No Flowers" published in English on Literary Hub in 2025, translated by David Boyd.

Selected short works in English "March Yarn" (short story), trans. Michael Emmerich, March was Made of Yarn: Reflections on the Japanese Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Meltdown, 2012. "About Her and the Memories That Belong to Her" (short story), trans. Hitomi Yoshio, Granta 132, 2015. "Where Have All the Sundays Gone?" (short story), trans. Hitomi Yoshio, Words Without Borders (On Memory: New Japanese Writing), 2015. "The Flower Garden" (short story), trans. Hitomi Yoshio, Freeman's: The Future of New Writing (), 2017. "How Much Heart" (flash fiction), trans. David Boyd, Granta Online, 2018. "The Flowers Look More Beautiful Now Than Ever" (essay), trans. Hitomi Yoshio, Granta Online, 2020. "Shame" (short story), trans. Louise Heal Kawai and Hitomi Yoshio, Granta Online, 2020. "Wisteria" (short story), trans. Hitomi Yoshio, Astra Magazine: Ecstasy, 2022. "The Door Between Us" (flash fiction), trans. Sam Bett, The New Yorker'', 2024.

Kawakami also wrote Japanese translations of Peter Rabbit.

Awards and recognition +YearPrizeWorkNotes 2007Tsubouchi Shoyo Prize for Young Emerging WritersWatakushi ritsuin hā, mata wa sekai2008Akutagawa PrizeChichi to Ran2009Chūya Nakahara PrizeSentan de, sasuwa sasareruwa sora eewa2010Murasaki Shikibu PrizeHeavenArt Encouragement Prize for New Artists2013Tanizaki PrizeAi no Yume tokaTakami Jun PrizeMizugame2016Watanabe Junichiro PrizeAkogare2018Grand Prix of Literary AssociationsMs Ice Sandwich (2018 English translation) 2019Mainichi Publishing Culture AwardBreasts and Eggs2022International Booker PrizeHeaven (2021 English translation)2023National Book Critics Circle Award for FictionAll the Lovers in the Night (2022 English translation)2024Yomiuri PrizeSisters in Yellow

Japanese author Haruki Murakami called her his favorite young novelist and has described her writing as "ceaselessly growing and evolving".

Notes

References

External links Official website