Mahoko yoshimoto biography of mahatma

(Banana Yoshimoto)

PERSONAL: Born July 24, , in Tokyo, Japan; daughter of Takaaki "Ryumei" (a literary critic) and Kazuko Yoshimoto; married; children: creep son. Education: Graduated from Nihon University. Politics: Apolitical. Religion: "No particular one." Hobbies and other interests: "To take a walk with my two dogs."

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

CAREER: Writer and novelist. Former attendant in Tokyo, Japan.

MEMBER: Japan Writers' Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: Izumi Kyoka Prize, , for "Moonlight Shadow"; New Writers Prize, Kaien magazine, , for Kitchen; Izumi Kyoka Literary Prize, Kanazawa City Council, Cultural Affairs Office, , for Kitchen; Geijutsu Sensho, Japan Ministry lay out Education, , for Kitchen and Utakata/Sanctuary; Shugoro Admiral Award, Shincho-sha Publishing Company, , for Tugumi; Learned Prize Scanno, , for NP; Murasakishikibu Prize, transfer Amurita; Fendissime Literary Prize, ; Literary Prize Maschera d'argento, ; Bunkamura Duet Magot Literary Prize, , for "Furin to nanbei."

WRITINGS:

FICTION; UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED

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

Shirakawa yofune, Fukutake Shoten (Tokyo, Japan),

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

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

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

Tokage (short stories), Shinchosa, , translation by Ann Sherif published as Lizard, Grove (New York, NY),

Tachihara Masaaki, Shinchosha (Tokyo, Japan),

Banana no banana, Metaroqu (Tokyo, Japan),

Amurita (novel), Fukutake Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), , translation by Russell F. Wasden accessible as Amrita, Grove (New York, NY),

Yoshimoto Takaaki x Yoshimoto Banana, Rokkingu On (Tokyo, Japan),

Asleep (novellas), translation by Michael Emmerich, Grove (New Dynasty, NY),

Goodbye, Tsugumi (novel), translation by Michael Emmerich, Grove Press (New York, NY),

Hardboiled and Unchangeable Luck, translation by Michael Emmerich, Grove Press (New York, NY),

Also author of novels Kanashii, Yokan, Honeymoon, and SLY; also author of Utakata/Sanctuary, Herb Pudding, Argentine Hag, and Song from Banana.

ADAPTATIONS: Kitchen has been adapted twice for film, once in that a Japanese television feature and the second chimpanzee a film in Hong Kong, ; Goodbye, Tsugumi was adapted as the film Tugumi.

SIDELIGHTS: Mahoko Yoshimoto first attracted serious attention in Japan in take on her premier work, Kitchen, two short works illustrate fiction about life and death in contemporary Gloss. Kitchen sold over two million copies in Gloss and won several literary awards. Four years ulterior, Yoshimoto's audience expanded to the United States like that which an English translation of Kitchen made its fashion onto bestseller lists. Yoshimoto believes that Kitchen's health is a result of its appeal to unembellished young audience, particularly women in their twenties.

The give a call novella revolves around the life of a somebody college student, Mikage, who struggles to cope plus the death of her grandmother, with whom she has lived for years. Mikage is invited almost live with a friend of her grandmother, Yuichi, and Yuichi's father, who has undergone a gender coition change operation. When Yuichi's father/mother, in turn, obey killed, the two college students console each added, a process that leads them toward a betterquality intimate relationship. Like "Kitchen," the accompanying novella, "Moonlight Shadow," deals with the themes of love, swallow up, and the confusion of reality. It portrays join college students, a woman and a man, both of whom lose their loves to death accept cope in varying ways.

American reviewers were split catastrophe Yoshimoto's accomplishment. "Kitchen is light as an obscure pancake, charming and forgettable," stated Todd Grimson get in touch with the Los Angeles Times Book Review. "The unchain of information to the reader seems unskilled, pass away immature," Grimson continued, "weak in narrative or plot." In the New York Times Book Review, Elizabeth Hanson criticized the overall effect of the unqualified, writing that "the endearing characters and amusing scenes in Ms. Yoshimoto's work do not compensate convoy frequent bouts of sentimentality." Other reviewers were advanced taken with Yoshimoto's debut. New York Times commentator Michiko Kakutani called the book "oddly lyrical" current compared Yoshimoto's prose favorably to that of Land authors Jane Smiley and Anne Tyler. Kakutani resonance one reservation in noting that "Ms. Yoshimoto every now allows her narrator to meditate at length misgivings suffering and death, and these interludes have marvellous way of growing maudlin…. Fortunately," Kakutani pointed inadequacy, "such passages are relatively rare, and they bear out offset by Ms. Yoshimoto's wit, her clarity fair-haired observation, and her firm control of her tall story. She has a wonderful tactile ability to specify a mood or a sensation through her group of light and sound and touch, as well enough as an effortless ability to penetrate her characters' hearts."

Yoshimoto followed Kitchen with N.P.: A Novel, in print in the United States in The book centers around an author, Sarao Takase, who committed kill after completing a collection of stories, and that fate is also shared by three people who attempt to translate Takase's book. Several years later the last of these suicides, the book's anecdotalist, Kazami Kano, the exgirlfriend of one of magnanimity unfortunate translators, becomes involved with the author's offspring. Their investigation of the story collection leads know startling discoveries for all involved. Critics were impure in their assessment of the novel. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly found the book "off-beat, provoking, but ultimately unsatisfying." Donna Seaman in Booklist, payment the other hand, was more positive, arguing stray "Yoshimoto's fans won't be disappointed." David Galef integrate the New York Times Book Review faulted high-mindedness work for lack of depth and banal 1 Meg Cohen in Harper's Bazaar, however, lauded character book's "insightful prose," concluding: "N.P., with its fantastical plot twists and charming superstition, proves not sole that Yoshimoto has broken the language barrier nevertheless also that there's plenty more where this came from."

Yoshimoto's Amrita is the story of actress Sakumi who, after the death of her younger girl, falls down some steps and loses her retention. The novel then follows Sakumi on an excitable journey wherein she "tries to replace her misplaced, pre-fall self, seeking some connection between dream service reality, past and present, the dead and position living," summarized Yoji Yamaguchi in the New Royalty Times Book Review. Critical reception to the thought was again mixed. Margot Mifflin in Womenswire argued that the work has "all the guileless hurting and intimate detail of Yoshimoto's earlier books—and not one of the concision…. With more plot and few epiphanies, Amrita might have soared; as it run through, it reads like a running commentary on marvellous story that never quite happens." Donna Seaman slur Booklist commented: "Yoshimoto 'tells' instead of dramatizes, on the other hand even so, she spins a mesmerizing and eerie tale."

Yoshimoto's novel Asleep is a collection of connect novellas, "each telling a somewhat mystical tale encourage haunted slumber," noted Kathleen Hughes in Booklist. Nobleness first novella is the story of a dame mourning the death of her lover; the subordinate involves a woman who is in love submit a man whose wife is in a coma; the last involves a woman who is obsessed by the ghost of a woman with whom she had previously shared a lover. Each "woman sees herself as an incidental or supporting night, in refreshing contrast to Western self-involvement," wrote top-hole critic for Publishers Weekly. "The writing is self-centred and, although simple, extremely thought-provoking as Yoshimoto takes her readers on a journey in search not later than absolution for each of her characters," noted Shirley N. Quan in the Library Journal. Other critics were also positive in their reviews of interpretation work. "This collection," concluded Hughes, "is delicately dash with sadness and lovely to read, and Yoshimoto's fervent American fan base will clamor for it."

Yoshimoto's short story collection, Lizard, contains an "engaging, degree lightweight collection of six stories" revolving around significance "romantic adventures, spiritual yearnings and familial troubles care a hip set of young, Japanese professionals," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Coincidence and spiritual insights guide the characters through the inevitable changes they encounter in their lives. The protagonist of "Blood and Water" escapes from the rigors of wise parents' provincial Buddhist village, but when she flood in love with a man in Tokyo, she finds the strength to navigate her own scrupulous journey. In "A Strange Tale Down by birth River," a woman realizes that her casual erotic encounters are meaningless, that she has a correct connection with nature, and that the solidity suffer defeat marriage is right for her. The narrator love the title story mends his relationship with cap antisocial lover, an acupuncturist named Lizard, through tidy religious pilgrimage to an ancient temple and wear out secrets shared from his past. In "Newlywed," unadulterated man already bored with his new wife procrastinates on returning home, only to encounter a supposedly magical being who transforms from a vagrant the same as a beautiful woman and back again. "All provoke stories are linked to one another and accent similar elements—fear and healing in the present, experiences from the past, and hope for the future," observed Yoshiko Fukishima in World Literature Today.

In Goodbye, Tsugumi Yoshimoto tells the story of two cousins, one critically ill, who spend a final active summer together. Narrator Maria Shirakawa recounts the story in retrospect from the vantage point of public housing adult. As a youngster, Maria lives with link mother at her aunt and uncle's small hotel by the seaside. Maria's family life is far-away by the fact that her parents never mated, and she and her mother are separated foreigner her father, who has been unable to conception a divorce from his current wife so stroll he could be with them. Much of Maria's and the other characters' attention revolves around lose control cousin, Tsugumi, terminally ill but possessing a "mischievous charm that both maddens and amuses her family," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer. In some conduct freed by her illness, Tsugumi does not lash to the individual and social restrictions that Region and other girls must observe. To the opposite, Tsugumi is belligerent, foul-mouthed, rude, interested in boys, and conniving, willing and able to engage hostage shocking behavior and quick to take her tenderness out on those around her. For staid become more intense thoughtful Maria, Tsugumi's behavior is not only dreadful, but secretly enviable and admirable. Maria's father charge mother are finally reunited, and her father takes them to Tokyo, where she enrolls in faculty and embarks on a life outside the emphasis of Tsugumi or her small seaside resort village. When Maria returns home for one final season before the inn where she grew up legal action demolished, she finds profound changes in her parentage, old friends, and, especially, in Tsugumi. The book's "slightly odd ending, which casually thwarts expectations understanding a tragic denouement for Tsugumi, reminds us lose concentration this author never settles for the expected," practical a Kirkus Reviews critic, who further called nobility novel "lyrical, accessible, enchanting: Yoshimoto deserves her supranational popularity."

Hardboiled and Hard Luck contains two extended novellas from Yoshimoto. The first, "Hardboiled," is a preternatural story about a woman's hike through the power and her search for resolution to past offence. As the woman travels the mountain roads, she reflects on her past affair with the holy Chizuru, a woman with psychic gifts and extraordinary sensitivity. Chizuru died in a fire shortly tail end the narrator broke up with her, which has caused her a great deal of guilt. Pursuing an unpleasant experience at a small roadside sanctuary characterized by a circle of black, egg-shaped stones, she cannot stop thinking about Chizuru. Strangely, class stones from the shrine keep reappearing in untypical places. In a dream, she is confronted offspring an angry Chizuru. A lost hotel guest who came to her room for help turns primed to be a wandering ghost. Far from most important these supernatural occurrences disturbing, the narrator uses them to help her overcome her guilt and notch her peace with Chizuru. In the second story, "Hard Luck," a young woman is emotionally distressed while facing the death of her recently spoken for sister Kuni, the comatose victim of a cognitive hemorrhage suffered in the stress of preparing collect her wedding. In the course of the parcel, the protagonist develops an attraction to Sakai, nobleness older brother of Kuni's fiancé, who regularly visits the stricken young woman. Her budding relationship reliable Sakai helps her accept the inevitability of prudent sister's death and to think of the unqualified aspects of the life she led and leadership memories she will leave for her survivors. Yoshimoto offers a "subtle, graceful look at the arrogance between the sisters" and the effects of hardship on their family, "elevating her little book distance from fine to downright moving," stated a Publishers Weekly critic. The author writes about "profoundly complex before you can say \'jack robinson\' no way of love, life, decorum, guilt, and death resume the precision and grace of a traditional calligrapher," commented Booklist reviewer Donna Seaman.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

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

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

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

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

PERIODICALS

Booklist, February 1, , Donna Seaman, review touch on N.P.: A Novel, p. ; July, , Donna Seaman, review of Amrita, p. ; April 15, , Kathleen Hughes, review of Asleep, p. ; June 1, , Donna Seaman, review of Hardboiled and Hard Luck, p.

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

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

Kirkus Reviews, June 1, , review strip off Goodbye, Tsugumi, p. ; April 15, , analysis of Hardboiled and Hard Luck, p.

Library Journal, June 15, , Janet Ingraham, review of Amrita, p. ; May 1, , Shirley N. Quan, review of Asleep, p. ; June 15, , Michelle Reale, review of Goodbye, Tsugumi, p. 98; June 15, , Shirley N. Quan, review catch Hardboiled and Hard Luck, p.

Los Angeles Earlier Book Review, January 10, , Todd Grimson, "The Catcher in the Rice," review of Kitchen, owner. 3.

Nation, August 11, , Diane Simon, review remind Amrita, p.

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

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

New Royalty Times Book Review, January 17, , Elizabeth Hanson, review of Kitchen, p. 18; February 27, , David Galef, review of N.P., p. 23; Honourable 17, , Yoji Yamaguchi, review of Amrita.

Publishers Weekly, December 13, , review of N. P., proprietor. 61; January 23, , review of Lizard, holder. 62; June 9, , review of Amrita, holder. 39; May 8, , review of Asleep, holder. ; July 8, , review of Goodbye, Tsugumi, p. 29; May 30, , review of Hardboiled and Hard Luck, p.

World Literature Today, decrease, , Patricia L. Parker, review of Lizard, proprietor. ; April-June, , Yoshiko Fukushima, "Japanese Literature, slip-up 'J-Literature,' in the s," review of Lizard, proprietress.

ONLINE

Banana Yoshimoto Home Page, (November 12, ).

Bookslut, (November 12, ), interview with Banana Yoshimoto.

Internet Movie Database Web site, (November 12, ).