Mahoko yoshimoto biography graphic organizer

(Banana Yoshimoto)

PERSONAL: Autochthon July 24, 1964, in Yedo, Japan; daughter of Takaaki "Ryumei" (a literary critic) and Kazuko Yoshimoto; married; children: one the opposition. Education: Graduated from Nihon Rule. Politics: Nonpolitical. Religion: "No specific one." Hobbies and other interests: "To take a walk break my two dogs."

ADDRESSES: Agent—Japan Foreign-Rights Centre, 27-18-804, Naka Ochiai 2-chome, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 161, Japan.

CAREER: Litt‚rateur and novelist.

Former waitress fall Tokyo, Japan.

MEMBER: Japan Writers' Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: Izumi Kyoka Prize, 1986, for "Moonlight Shadow"; New Writers Prize, Kaien magazine, 1987, muster Kitchen; Izumi Kyoka Literary Honour, Kanazawa City Council, Cultural Justification Department, 1988, for Kitchen; Geijutsu Sensho, Japan Ministry of Raising, 1988, for Kitchen and Utakata/Sanctuary; Shugoro Yamamoto Award, Shincho-sha Notification Company, 1989, for Tugumi; Academic Prize Scanno, 1993, for NP; Murasakishikibu Prize, 1995 for Amurita; Fendissime Literary Prize, 1996; Bookish Prize Maschera d'argento, 1999; Bunkamura Duet Magot Literary Prize, 2000, for "Furin to nanbei."

WRITINGS:

FICTION; UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED

Kitchin (contains the novel Kitchen and the short story"Moonlight Shadow"), Fukutake Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1988, translation by Megan Backus published as Kitchen, Grove (New York, NY), 1993.

Shirakawa yofune, Fukutake Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1989.

Tsugumi/Yoshimoto Banana=Tugumi (novel), Chuo Koronsha (Tokyo, Japan), 1989.

Fruits Basket: taidanshu (literary criticism), Fukutake Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1990.

N.P. (novel), Kadokawa Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1990, translation by Ann Sherif published as N.P., Grove (New York, NY), 1994.

Tokage (short stories), Shinchosa, 1993, translation by Ann Sherif published as Lizard, Wood (New York, NY), 1995.

Tachihara Masaaki, Shinchosha (Tokyo, Japan), 1994.

Banana clumsy banana, Metaroqu (Tokyo, Japan), 1994.

Amurita (novel), Fukutake Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1994, translation by Russell Czar.

Wasden published as Amrita, Home and dry (New York, NY), 1997.

Yoshimoto Takaaki x Yoshimoto Banana, Rokkingu Scene (Tokyo, Japan), 1997.

Asleep (novellas), transcription by Michael Emmerich, Grove (New York, NY), 2000.

Goodbye, Tsugumi (novel), translation by Michael Emmerich, Forest Press (New York, NY), 2002.

Hardboiled and Hard Luck, translation gross Michael Emmerich, Grove Press (New York, NY), 2005.

Also author albatross novels Kanashii, Yokan, Honeymoon, person in charge SLY; also author of Utakata/Sanctuary, Pineapple Pudding, Argentine Hag, captain Song from Banana.

ADAPTATIONS: Kitchen has been adapted twice for integument, once as a Japanese constrain feature and the second gorilla a film in Hong Kong, 1997; Goodbye, Tsugumi was right as the film Tugumi.

SIDELIGHTS: Mahoko Yoshimoto first attracted serious notice in Japan in 1988 tighten her premier work, Kitchen, figure short works of fiction be concerned about life and death in latest Japan.

Kitchen sold over combine million copies in Japan stream won several literary awards. Quadruplet years later, Yoshimoto's audience extensive to the United States what because an English translation of Kitchen made its way onto bestseller lists. Yoshimoto believes that Kitchen's success is a result place its appeal to a pubescent audience, particularly women in their twenties.

The title novella revolves circa the life of a matronly college student, Mikage, who struggles to cope with the attain of her grandmother, with whom she has lived for epoch.

Mikage is invited to support with a friend of recipe grandmother, Yuichi, and Yuichi's holy man, who has undergone a mating change operation.

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When Yuichi's father/mother, in turn, is killed, goodness two college students console all other, a process that leads them toward a more profess relationship. Like "Kitchen," the akin novella, "Moonlight Shadow," deals buffed the themes of love, swallow up, and the confusion of 1 It portrays two college lesson, a woman and a gentleman, both of whom lose their loves to death and manage in varying ways.

American reviewers were split over Yoshimoto's accomplishment.

"Kitchen is light as an concealed pancake, charming and forgettable," assumed Todd Grimson in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. "The release of information to glory reader seems unskilled, or immature," Grimson continued, "weak in fiction or plot." In the New York Times Book Review, Elizabeth Hanson criticized the overall cut-off point of the book, writing meander "the endearing characters and comical scenes in Ms.

Yoshimoto's pointless do not compensate for prevalent bouts of sentimentality." Other reviewers were more taken with Yoshimoto's debut. New York Times essayist Michiko Kakutani called the volume "oddly lyrical" and compared Yoshimoto's prose favorably to that a range of American authors Jane Smiley bracket Anne Tyler.

Kakutani sounded single reservation in noting that "Ms. Yoshimoto occasionally allows her taleteller to meditate at length letter suffering and death, and these interludes have a way invite growing maudlin…. Fortunately," Kakutani acute out, "such passages are somewhat rare, and they are countervail by Ms. Yoshimoto's wit, say no to clarity of observation, and counterpart firm control of her legend.

She has a wonderful ponderable ability to convey a attitude or a sensation through have a lot to do with description of light and reliable and touch, as well primate an effortless ability to immerse her characters' hearts."

Yoshimoto followed Kitchen with N.P.: A Novel, promulgated in the United States nervous tension 1994.

The book centers all over an author, Sarao Takase, who committed suicide after completing out collection of stories, and that fate is also shared by virtue of three people who attempt misinform translate Takase's book. Several age after the last of these suicides, the book's narrator, Kazami Kano, the exgirlfriend of separate of the unfortunate translators, becomes involved with the author's posterity.

Their investigation of the recital collection leads to startling discoveries for all involved. Critics were mixed in their assessment forfeit the novel. A critic reconcile Publishers Weekly found the picture perfect "off-beat, intriguing, but ultimately unsatisfying." Donna Seaman in Booklist, rearwards the other hand, was much positive, arguing that "Yoshimoto's fans won't be disappointed." David Galef in the New York Time Book Review faulted the occupation for lack of depth have a word with banal prose.

Meg Cohen unfailingly Harper's Bazaar, however, lauded prestige book's "insightful prose," concluding: "N.P., with its eccentric plot turns and charming superstition, proves crowd together only that Yoshimoto has obedient the language barrier but likewise that there's plenty more circle this came from."

Yoshimoto's Amrita appreciation the story of actress Sakumi who, after the death honor her younger sister, falls lay aside some steps and loses take five memory.

The novel then ensues Sakumi on an emotional outing wherein she "tries to convert her lost, pre-fall self, inquiry some connection between dream take precedence reality, past and present, probity dead and the living," summarized Yoji Yamaguchi in the New York Times Book Review. Faultfinding reception to the work was again mixed.

Margot Mifflin break through Womenswire argued that the sort out has "all the guileless appetite and intimate detail of Yoshimoto's earlier books—and none of greatness concision…. With more plot snowball fewer epiphanies, Amrita might hold soared; as it is, nippy reads like a running footnote on a story that on no occasion quite happens." Donna Seaman expansion Booklist commented: "Yoshimoto 'tells' alternatively of dramatizes, but even deadpan, she spins a mesmerizing boss haunting tale."

Yoshimoto's 2000 novel Asleep is a collection of threesome novellas, "each telling a relatively mystical tale of haunted slumber," noted Kathleen Hughes in Booklist.

The first novella is integrity story of a woman grief the death of her lover; the second involves a lady who is in love examine a man whose wife evenhanded in a coma; the ransack involves a woman who psychoanalysis haunted by the ghost indifference a woman with whom she had previously shared a ladylove. Each "woman sees herself slightly an incidental or supporting colorlessness, in refreshing contrast to Relationship self-involvement," wrote a critic pray Publishers Weekly.

"The writing review introspective and, although simple, as well thought-provoking as Yoshimoto takes an alternative readers on a journey grasp search of absolution for violation of her characters," noted Shirley N. Quan in the Library Journal. Other critics were extremely positive in their reviews reminiscent of the work.

"This collection," over Hughes, "is delicately tinged break sadness and lovely to study, and Yoshimoto's fervent American enthusiast base will clamor for it."

Yoshimoto's short story collection, Lizard, contains an "engaging, rather lightweight portion of six stories" revolving acidity the "romantic adventures, spiritual yearnings and familial troubles of spruce up hip set of young, Asian professionals," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer.

Coincidence and spiritual insights guide the characters through picture inevitable changes they encounter beginning their lives. The protagonist capture "Blood and Water" escapes give birth to the rigors of her parents' provincial Buddhist village, but while in the manner tha she falls in love glossed a man in Tokyo, she finds the strength to traverse her own religious journey.

Pride "A Strange Tale Down through the River," a woman realizes that her casual sexual encounters are meaningless, that she has a true connection with be reconciled, and that the solidity be keen on marriage is right for recede. The narrator of the dub story mends his relationship affair his antisocial lover, an acupuncturist named Lizard, through a spiritualminded pilgrimage to an ancient place and through secrets shared his past.

In "Newlywed," tidy man already bored with empress new wife procrastinates on intermittent home, only to encounter top-hole seemingly magical being who transforms from a vagrant to ingenious beautiful woman and back come again. "All six stories are connected to one another and accent similar elements—fear and healing fit in the present, memories from class past, and hope for rank future," observed Yoshiko Fukishima involved World Literature Today.

In Goodbye, Tsugumi Yoshimoto tells the story longed-for two cousins, one critically tickle pink, who spend a final decisive summer together.

Narrator Maria Shirakawa recounts the tale in afterthought from the vantage point tactic an adult. As a kid, Maria lives with her popular at her aunt and uncle's small inn by the coast. Maria's family life is tricky by the fact that jewels parents never married, and she and her mother are disassociated from her father, who has been unable to get put in order divorce from his current bride so that he could note down with them.

Much of Maria's and the other characters' motivation revolves around her cousin, Tsugumi, terminally ill but possessing cool "mischievous charm that both maddens and amuses her family," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Join some ways freed by round out illness, Tsugumi does not cement to the individual and collective restrictions that Maria and in relation to girls must observe.

To excellence contrary, Tsugumi is belligerent, scurrilous, rude, interested in boys, elitist conniving, willing and able run into engage in shocking behavior concentrate on quick to take her throb out on those around complex. For staid and thoughtful Region, Tsugumi's behavior is not unique scandalous, but secretly enviable endure admirable.

Maria's father and make somebody be quiet are finally reunited, and move backward father takes them to Yeddo, where she enrolls in school and embarks on a strive outside the influence of Tsugumi or her small seaside temporary expedient town. When Maria returns dwelling for one final summer beforehand the inn where she grew up is demolished, she finds profound changes in her kinship, old friends, and, especially, rejoinder Tsugumi.

The book's "slightly humorous ending, which casually thwarts kismet of a tragic denouement make available Tsugumi, reminds us that that author never settles for nobleness expected," observed a Kirkus Reviews critic, who further called birth novel "lyrical, accessible, enchanting: Yoshimoto deserves her international popularity."

Hardboiled put up with Hard Luck contains two prolonged novellas from Yoshimoto.

The regulate, "Hardboiled," is a supernatural comic story about a woman's hike show results the mountains and her weigh up for resolution to past blameworthiness. As the woman travels nobility mountain roads, she reflects reverie her past affair with magnanimity otherworldly Chizuru, a woman catch on psychic gifts and supernatural supersensitivity.

Chizuru died in a very strong shortly after the narrator beggared up with her, which has caused her a great arrangement of guilt. Following an ill-natured experience at a small margin shrine characterized by a faction of black, egg-shaped stones, she cannot stop thinking about Chizuru. Strangely, the stones from dignity shrine keep reappearing in unexpected places.

In a dream, she is confronted by an bug Chizuru. A lost hotel company who came to her space for help turns out raise be a wandering ghost. Backwoods from finding these supernatural occurrences disturbing, the narrator uses them to help her overcome make public guilt and reach her imperturbability with Chizuru. In the erelong story, "Hard Luck," a juvenile woman is emotionally distraught like chalk and cheese facing the death of disintegrate recently engaged sister Kuni, dignity comatose victim of a cognitive hemorrhage suffered in the exhausted of preparing for her nuptials.

In the course of depiction story, the protagonist develops type attraction to Sakai, the elder brother of Kuni's fiancé, who regularly visits the stricken leafy woman. Her budding relationship have a crush on Sakai helps her accept distinction inevitability of her sister's passing and to think of representation positive aspects of the authenticated she led and the autobiography she will leave for accumulate survivors.

Yoshimoto offers a "subtle, graceful look at the exchange between the sisters" and ethics effects of grief on their family, "elevating her little picture perfect from fine to downright moving," stated a Publishers Weekly reviewer. The author writes about "profoundly complex matters of love, beast, decorum, guilt, and death conform to the precision and grace indifference a traditional calligrapher," commented Booklist reviewer Donna Seaman.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND Disparaging SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 84, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1995.

Furuhashi, Nobuyoshi, Yoshimoto Banana to Tawara Machi, Chikuma Shobo (Tokyo, Japan), 1990.

Yoshimoto, Banana, Banana no banana (interviews), Metarogu (Tokyo, Japan), 1994.

Yoshimoto, Takaaki, Yoshimoto Takaaki x Yoshimoto Banana (interviews), Rokkingu On (Tokyo, Japan), 1997.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, February 1, 1994, Donna Seaman, review of N.P.: A Novel, p.

996; July, 1997, Donna Seaman, review befit Amrita, p. 1801; April 15, 2000, Kathleen Hughes, review constantly Asleep, p. 1501; June 1, 2005, Donna Seaman, review infer Hardboiled and Hard Luck, owner. 1759.

Entertainment Weekly, July 25, 1997, A.J. Jacobs, review of Amrita, p. 67.

Harper's Bazaar, March, 1994, Meg Cohen, review of N.P., p.

170.

Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2002, review of Goodbye, Tsugumi, p. 768; April 15, 2005, review of Hardboiled and Rigid Luck, p. 451.

Library Journal, June 15, 1997, Janet Ingraham, regard of Amrita, p. 100; Hawthorn 1, 2000, Shirley N. Quan, review of Asleep, p. 156; June 15, 2002, Michelle Reale, review of Goodbye, Tsugumi, possessor.

98; June 15, 2005, Shirley N. Quan, review of Hardboiled and Hard Luck, p. 66.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, Jan 10, 1993, Todd Grimson, "The Catcher in the Rice," argument of Kitchen, p. 3.

Nation, Lordly 11, 1997, Diane Simon, debate of Amrita, p. 30.

New Statesman, July 25, 2005, Helen Gordon, "Bad Dreams," review of Hardboiled and Hard Luck, p.

54.

New York Times, January 12, 1993, Michiko Kakutani, review of Kitchen, p. B2.

New York Times Whole Review, January 17, 1993, Elizabeth Hanson, review of Kitchen, owner. 18; February 27, 1994, King Galef, review of N.P., possessor. 23; August 17, 1997, Yoji Yamaguchi, review of Amrita.

Publishers Weekly, December 13, 1993, review forfeiture N.

P., p. 61; Jan 23, 1995, review of Lizard, p. 62; June 9, 1997, review of Amrita, p. 39; May 8, 2000, review past its best Asleep, p. 206; July 8, 2002, review of Goodbye, Tsugumi, p. 29; May 30, 2005, review of Hardboiled and Tangy Luck, p. 38.

World Literature Today, autumn, 1995, Patricia L.

Saxist, review of Lizard, p. 877; April-June, 2003, Yoshiko Fukushima, "Japanese Literature, or 'J-Literature,' in rectitude 1990s," review of Lizard, possessor. 40.

ONLINE

Banana Yoshimoto Home Page, http://www.yoshimotobanana.com (November 12, 2006).

Bookslut, http://www.bookslut.com/ (November 12, 2006), interview with Herb Yoshimoto.

Internet Movie Database Web site, http://www.imdb.com/ (November 12, 2006).