Saou Ichikawa


Saou Ichikawa is a Japanese writer. She is best known for her debut novel Hunchback, for which she won the Akutagawa Prize in 2023.

Biography

Ichikawa was born September 27, 1979. She has congenital myopathy and uses a wheelchair and a respirator, the latter of which she has used since the age of 13. She has an older sister, who also has congenital myopathy. She decided to become a novelist when she was 20 years old, as she felt her career options were limited due to her disability. She first began to write light novels, but grew discouraged after a light novel she wrote failed to win a prize, and decided to instead write serious fiction. She graduated from Waseda University. She grew up reading the Paddington Bear books by Michael Bond and the St. Clare's books by Enid Blyton; she named Dostoyevsky's The Idiot and Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha as having influenced her.
At university, she began to research the representation of disabled people in literature, which inspired the writing of her novel Hunchback, about a profoundly disabled woman, Izawa, who pays her male caretaker to have sex with her. Hunchback was published in 2023. The novel was well-received: it sold 230,000 copies; The Japan Times described it as "dark and funny". She is the first disabled writer to win the Akutagawa Prize. Novelist Keiichiro Hirano, who was on the jury for the Akutagawa Prize for that year, stated that the book "knocks down conventional wisdom and common sense centered on able-bodied people". Viking Press acquired the English rights to the novel, and a translation by Polly Barton was released in 2025. The translation received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, both of which praised the social commentary of the novel. The English translation was longlisted for the International Booker Prize; the judges praised Hunchback for its criticism of ableism and sexism.

Works

  • Träumerei's Dream, 2018
  • Hunchback, 2023
  • Ophelia No. 23, 2024
  • Pick up a Konpeitou, 2024
  • Suicide the heartbeat, 2024
  • Girl's spine, 2025
  • Conscientious objection, 2025
  • * #1 Looking back at the witty phrases
  • * #2 Mama
  • * #3 Balloon papa
  • Evil role, 2025
  • Power, 2025
  • Luck, 2025

    Awards and recognition

  • 2023: Bungakukai Prize for New Writers for Hunchback
  • 2023: Akutagawa Prize for Hunchback
  • 2025: Longlisted for the International Booker Prize for ''Hunchback''