Yōko Ogawa


Yōko Ogawa is a Japanese writer. Her work has won every major Japanese literary award, including the Akutagawa Prize and the Yomiuri Prize. Internationally, she has been the recipient of the Shirley Jackson Award and the American Book Award. The Memory Police was also shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2020.
Some of her most well known works include The Housekeeper and the Professor, The Diving Pool and Hotel Iris.

Background and education

Ogawa was born in Okayama, Okayama Prefecture. Growing up in a family that followed the Konkōkyō religion, she was influenced by her upbringing in a household with deep religious and educational values. She graduated with a degree in literature from Waseda University, Tokyo. When she married her husband, a steel company engineer, she quit her job as a medical university secretary and wrote while her husband was at work. Initially, she wrote only as a hobby, and her husband didn't realise she was a writer until her debut novel, The Breaking of the Butterfly, received a literary prize. Her novella Pregnancy Diary, written in brief intervals when her son was a toddler, won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for literature, thus cementing her reputation in Japan.
She currently lives in Ashiya, Japan.

Career

Since 1988, Ogawa has published more than fifty works of fiction and nonfiction. Much of her work has yet to be translated into English. In 2006, she worked alongside the mathematician Masahiko Fujiwara to co-write "An Introduction to the World's Most Elegant Mathematics", a dialogue on the extraordinary beauty of numbers.
Her work has been published in the New Yorker, A Public Space and Zoetrope.
The 2005 French film L'Annulaire was based in part on Ogawa's Kusuriyubi no hyōhon. Her novel The Housekeeper and the Professor was adapted into the movie The Professor's Beloved Equation. In partnership with Amazon studios, Reed Morano and Charlie Kaufman are set to adapt ''The Memory Police.''

Themes and influences

Kenzaburō Ōe has said, "Yoko Ogawa is able to give expression to the most subtle workings of human psychology in prose that is gentle yet penetrating." Her English translator, Stephen Snyder, has said that "There is a naturalness to what she writes so it never feels forced...Her narrative seems to be flowing from a source that’s hard to identify."
Frequently, she explores the theme of memory in her works. For instance, The Housekeeper and the Professor follows a mathematics professor who cannot remember anything for longer than eighty minutes, and The Memory Police is about a group of islanders who gradually forget the existence of certain things, such as birds or flowers. Human cruelty features as another prominent theme in her work, as she is interested in exploring what drives people to commit acts of physical or emotional violence. She often writes about female bodies and the woman's role in a family, which has led many to label her as a feminist writer. Ogawa is hesitant about this label, stating instead that she "just peeked into and took notes from what they were doing".
The Diary of Anne Frank has been a significant source of inspiration to her throughout her career. She first encountered the diary as a teenager, and was inspired to start a diary of her own, writing back to Anne as though they were friends. She notes how "Anne’s heart and mind were so rich," and that "her diary proved that people can grow even in such a confined situation. And writing could give people freedom." Given its themes of persecution and confinement, The Memory Police in particular is a response to Anne's diary and the Holocaust in general.
While at Waseda University, she was influenced by fellow Japanese authors such as Mieko Kanai, Kenzaburō Ōe, and Haruki Murakami. She also felt influenced by the American author Paul Auster, who she believes "writes a spoken literature—it feels like he’s written down a story someone told him, rather than creating it himself. Shibata’s translation was also very important, but when I read Moon Palace I thought ‘This is how I’d like to write.’ Like I’m just a medium for transferring a story from the world outside."

Awards and honors

Works in English translation

Novels and novellas

The Diving Pool ; translated by Stephen Snyder, New York: Picador, 2008. ; published on The New York Times in 2006The Memory Police, translated by Stephen Snyder, Pantheon Books, 2019.

Short stories and collections

  • "Pregnancy Diary" ; translated by Stephen Snyder, The New Yorker, 12/2005.
  • "The Cafeteria in the Evening and a Pool in the Rain" ; translated by Stephen Snyder, The New Yorker, 9/2004.
  • "Transit" ; translated by Alisa Freedman, Japanese Art: The Scholarship and Legacy of Chino Kaori, special issue of Review of Japanese Culture and Society, Vol. XV : 114–125.
  • "The Man Who Sold Braces" ; translated by Motoyuki Shibata, Manoa, 13.1, 2001.Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales Translated by Stephen Snyder, Picador, 2013.

Other works

Agehachō ga kowareru toki, 揚羽蝶が壊れる時, 1989, Kaien PrizeKanpeki na byōshitsu, 完璧な病室, 1989Same nai kōcha, 冷めない紅茶, 1990Shugā taimu, シュガータイム, 1991Yohaku no ai, 余白の愛, 1992Angelina Sano Motoharu to 10 no tanpen, アンジェリーナ―佐野元春と10の短編, 1993Yōsei ga mai oriru yoru, 妖精が舞い下りる夜, 1993Hisoyaka na kesshō, 密やかな結晶, 1994Kusuriyubi no hyōhon, 薬指の標本, 1994Rokukakukei no shō heya, 六角形の小部屋, 1994Anne Furanku no kioku, アンネ・フランクの記憶, 1995Shishū suru shōjo, 刺繍する少女, 1996
  • , やさしい訴え, 1996Kamoku na shigai, midara na tomurai, 寡黙な死骸みだらな弔い, 1998 Kōritsui ta kaori, 凍りついた香り, 1998Fukaki kokoro no soko yori, 深き心の底より, 1999Gūzen no shukufuku, 偶然の祝福, 2000Chinmoku hakubutsukan, 沈黙博物館, 2000Mabuta, まぶた, 2001Kifujin A no sosei, 貴婦人Aの蘇生, 2002Burafuman no maisō, ブラフマンの埋葬, 2004, Izumi Kyōka PrizeYo ni mo utsukushī sūgaku nyūmon, 世にも美しい数学入門, 2005 Inu no shippo o nade nagara, 犬のしっぽを撫でながら, 2006Otogibanashi no wasuremono, おとぎ話の忘れ物, 2006 Umi, 海 2006Hajimete no bungaku Ogawa Yōko, はじめての文学 小川洋子 2007Hakase no hondana, 博士の本棚, 2007Monogatari no yakuwari, 物語の役割, 2007Ogawa Yōko taiwa shū, 小川洋子 対話集, 2007 Yoake no fuchi wo samayou hitobito, 夜明けの縁をさ迷う人々, 2007Kagaku no tobira wo nokku suru, 科学の扉をノックする, 2008Karā hiyoko to kōhīmame, カラーひよことコーヒー豆, 2009Kokoro to hibikiau dokusho annai, 心と響き合う読書案内, 2009Neko wo daite zou to oyogu, 猫を抱いて象と泳ぐ, 2009Genkou reimai nikki, 原稿零枚日記, 2010Moso kibun, 妄想気分, 2011Hitojichi no roudokukai, 人質の朗読会, 2011Tonikaku sanpo itashimasho, とにかく散歩いたしましょう, 2012Kotori, ことり, 2012Saihate ākēdo, 最果てアーケード, 2012Itsumo karera wa dokoka ni, いつも彼らはどこかに, 2013Kohaku no matataki, 琥珀のまたたき, 2015Fujichaku suru ryūsei tachi, 不時着する流星たち, 2017Kuchibue no jōzu na shirayukihime, 口笛の上手な白雪姫, 2018Kobako, 小箱, 2019Yakusoku sareta idō, 約束された移動, 2019

Interviews