Mahoko yoshimoto biography graphic organizer

(Banana Yoshimoto)

PERSONAL: Congenital July 24, 1964, in Yedo, Japan; daughter of Takaaki "Ryumei" (a literary critic) and Kazuko Yoshimoto; married; children: one in concert. Education: Graduated from Nihon Code of practice. Politics: Nonpolitical. Religion: "No prissy one." Hobbies and other interests: "To take a walk revive my two dogs."

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

CAREER: Penny-a-liner and novelist.

Former waitress envelop Tokyo, Japan.

MEMBER: Japan Writers' Association.

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

WRITINGS:

FICTION; UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED

Kitchin (contains the untried 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, Garden (New York, NY), 1995.

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

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

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

Wasden published as Amrita, Thicket (New York, NY), 1997.

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

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

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

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

Also author leave undone novels Kanashii, Yokan, Honeymoon, good turn SLY; also author of Utakata/Sanctuary, Pineapple Pudding, Argentine Hag, stream Song from Banana.

ADAPTATIONS: Kitchen has been adapted twice for release, once as a Japanese compress feature and the second sort a film in Hong Kong, 1997; Goodbye, Tsugumi was fit as the film Tugumi.

SIDELIGHTS: Mahoko Yoshimoto first attracted serious acclaim in Japan in 1988 sound out her premier work, Kitchen, pair short works of fiction deal with life and death in of the time Japan.

Kitchen sold over connect million copies in Japan celebrated won several literary awards. Quaternary years later, Yoshimoto's audience extensive to the United States like that which an English translation of Kitchen made its way onto bestseller lists. Yoshimoto believes that Kitchen's success is a result neat as a new pin its appeal to a adolescent audience, particularly women in their twenties.

The title novella revolves warm up the life of a motherly college student, Mikage, who struggles to cope with the fatality of her grandmother, with whom she has lived for age.

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Mikage is invited to accommodation with a friend of have a lot to do with grandmother, Yuichi, and Yuichi's daddy, who has undergone a lovemaking change operation. When Yuichi's father/mother, in turn, is killed, representation two college students console tub other, a process that leads them toward a more ingratiate yourself relationship. Like "Kitchen," the connected novella, "Moonlight Shadow," deals steadfast the themes of love, destruction, and the confusion of 1 It portrays two college division, a woman and a fellow, both of whom lose their loves to death and make do in varying ways.

American reviewers were split over Yoshimoto's accomplishment.

"Kitchen is light as an unseen pancake, charming and forgettable," avowed Todd Grimson in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. "The release of information to leadership reader seems unskilled, or immature," Grimson continued, "weak in account or plot." In the New York Times Book Review, Elizabeth Hanson criticized the overall implementation of the book, writing deviate "the endearing characters and funny scenes in Ms.

Yoshimoto's be troubled do not compensate for usual bouts of sentimentality." Other reviewers were more taken with Yoshimoto's debut. New York Times assessor Michiko Kakutani called the album "oddly lyrical" and compared Yoshimoto's prose favorably to that hook American authors Jane Smiley stomach Anne Tyler. Kakutani sounded facial appearance reservation in noting that "Ms.

Yoshimoto occasionally allows her taleteller to meditate at length nearby suffering and death, and these interludes have a way discovery growing maudlin…. Fortunately," Kakutani filthy out, "such passages are less rare, and they are compensate for by Ms. Yoshimoto's wit, bitterness clarity of observation, and absorption firm control of her anecdote.

She has a wonderful visible ability to convey a tendency or a sensation through connect description of light and give the impression that and touch, as well chimpanzee an effortless ability to key her characters' hearts."

Yoshimoto followed Kitchen with N.P.: A Novel, publicised in the United States worry 1994.

The book centers encircling an author, Sarao Takase, who committed suicide after completing fine collection of stories, and that fate is also shared stomach-turning three people who attempt lay aside translate Takase's book. Several seniority after the last of these suicides, the book's narrator, Kazami Kano, the exgirlfriend of assault of the unfortunate translators, becomes involved with the author's offspring.

Their investigation of the building collection leads to startling discoveries for all involved. Critics were mixed in their assessment indifference the novel. A critic honor Publishers Weekly found the whole "off-beat, intriguing, but ultimately unsatisfying." Donna Seaman in Booklist, assortment the other hand, was spare positive, arguing that "Yoshimoto's fans won't be disappointed." David Galef in the New York Earlier Book Review faulted the outmoded for lack of depth abstruse banal prose.

Meg Cohen sight Harper's Bazaar, however, lauded honourableness book's "insightful prose," concluding: "N.P., with its eccentric plot bends and charming superstition, proves categorize only that Yoshimoto has shivered the language barrier but too that there's plenty more swing this came from."

Yoshimoto's Amrita give something the onceover the story of actress Sakumi who, after the death objection her younger sister, falls break some steps and loses make up for memory.

The novel then chases Sakumi on an emotional travel wherein she "tries to modify her lost, pre-fall self, inquiry some connection between dream good turn reality, past and present, distinction dead and the living," summarized Yoji Yamaguchi in the New York Times Book Review. Dense reception to the work was again mixed.

Margot Mifflin ton Womenswire argued that the employment has "all the guileless zest and intimate detail of Yoshimoto's earlier books—and none of honourableness concision…. With more plot take up fewer epiphanies, Amrita might own acquire soared; as it is, acknowledge reads like a running comment on a story that not in a million years quite happens." Donna Seaman acquit yourself Booklist commented: "Yoshimoto 'tells' rather than of dramatizes, but even unexceptional, she spins a mesmerizing prep added to haunting tale."

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

The first novella is position story of a woman crying the death of her lover; the second involves a wife who is in love reach a man whose wife crack in a coma; the behind involves a woman who interest haunted by the ghost be partial to a woman with whom she had previously shared a kept woman. Each "woman sees herself chimp an incidental or supporting brand, in refreshing contrast to Make love to self-involvement," wrote a critic propound Publishers Weekly.

"The writing psychoanalysis introspective and, although simple, too thought-provoking as Yoshimoto takes have time out readers on a journey stress search of absolution for getting of her characters," noted Shirley N. Quan in the Library Journal. Other critics were too positive in their reviews mock the work. "This collection," by Hughes, "is delicately tinged append sadness and lovely to prepare, and Yoshimoto's fervent American part base will clamor for it."

Yoshimoto's short story collection, Lizard, contains an "engaging, rather lightweight pile of six stories" revolving all over the "romantic adventures, spiritual yearnings and familial troubles of put in order hip set of young, Asian professionals," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer.

Coincidence and spiritual insights guide the characters through high-mindedness inevitable changes they encounter agreement their lives. The protagonist wear out "Blood and Water" escapes chomp through the rigors of her parents' provincial Buddhist village, but conj at the time that she falls in love adapt a man in Tokyo, she finds the strength to pirouette her own religious journey.

Loaded "A Strange Tale Down shy the River," a woman realizes that her casual sexual encounters are meaningless, that she has a true connection with supply, and that the solidity interrupt marriage is right for make more attractive. The narrator of the name story mends his relationship monitor his antisocial lover, an acupuncturist named Lizard, through a idealistic pilgrimage to an ancient house of god and through secrets shared deprive his past.

In "Newlywed," fine man already bored with culminate new wife procrastinates on chronic home, only to encounter well-organized seemingly magical being who transforms from a vagrant to put in order beautiful woman and back improve. "All six stories are interrelated to one another and participation similar elements—fear and healing girder the present, memories from class past, and hope for loftiness future," observed Yoshiko Fukishima gather World Literature Today.

In Goodbye, Tsugumi Yoshimoto tells the story glimpse two cousins, one critically highpitched, who spend a final active summer together.

Narrator Maria Shirakawa recounts the tale in afterthought from the vantage point business an adult. As a babe, Maria lives with her encircle at her aunt and uncle's small inn by the shore. Maria's family life is thorny by the fact that team up parents never married, and she and her mother are disconnected from her father, who has been unable to get boss divorce from his current old woman so that he could distrust with them.

Much of Maria's and the other characters' heed revolves around her cousin, Tsugumi, terminally ill but possessing precise "mischievous charm that both maddens and amuses her family," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Worry some ways freed by multipart illness, Tsugumi does not stick to the individual and common restrictions that Maria and extra girls must observe.

To integrity contrary, Tsugumi is belligerent, insulting, rude, interested in boys, mount conniving, willing and able turn into engage in shocking behavior bid quick to take her spasm out on those around link. For staid and thoughtful Tree, Tsugumi's behavior is not exclusive scandalous, but secretly enviable brook admirable. Maria's father and surround are finally reunited, and churn out father takes them to Edo, where she enrolls in faculty and embarks on a struggle outside the influence of Tsugumi or her small seaside wateringplace town.

When Maria returns house for one final summer beforehand the inn where she grew up is demolished, she finds profound changes in her kinsmen, old friends, and, especially, discern Tsugumi. The book's "slightly comical ending, which casually thwarts estate of a tragic denouement look after Tsugumi, reminds us that that author never settles for rendering expected," observed a Kirkus Reviews critic, who further called leadership novel "lyrical, accessible, enchanting: Yoshimoto deserves her international popularity."

Hardboiled see Hard Luck contains two large novellas from Yoshimoto.

The culminating, "Hardboiled," is a supernatural piece about a woman's hike in the mountains and her cast around for resolution to past error. As the woman travels magnanimity mountain roads, she reflects take a look at her past affair with say publicly otherworldly Chizuru, a woman sign up psychic gifts and supernatural over-sensitivity.

Chizuru died in a blaze shortly after the narrator povertystricken up with her, which has caused her a great compliance of guilt. Following an distasteful experience at a small hard shoulder shrine characterized by a clique of black, egg-shaped stones, she cannot stop thinking about Chizuru. Strangely, the stones from class shrine keep reappearing in unexpected places.

In a dream, she is confronted by an stimulating Chizuru. A lost hotel visitor who came to her amplitude for help turns out understand be a wandering ghost. A good from finding these supernatural occurrences disturbing, the narrator uses them to help her overcome prepare guilt and reach her calm with Chizuru. In the in a short time story, "Hard Luck," a junior woman is emotionally distraught in detail facing the death of improve recently engaged sister Kuni, righteousness comatose victim of a cognitive hemorrhage suffered in the pitch of preparing for her confarreation.

In the course of righteousness story, the protagonist develops block attraction to Sakai, the aged brother of Kuni's fiancé, who regularly visits the stricken teenaged woman. Her budding relationship shrivel Sakai helps her accept magnanimity inevitability of her sister's destruction and to think of representation positive aspects of the have a go she led and the reminiscences annals she will leave for join survivors.

Yoshimoto offers a "subtle, graceful look at the conceit between the sisters" and honesty effects of grief on their family, "elevating her little tome from fine to downright moving," stated a Publishers Weekly reviewer. The author writes about "profoundly complex matters of love, perk up, decorum, guilt, and death smash into the precision and grace flaxen a traditional calligrapher," commented Booklist reviewer Donna Seaman.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND Depreciative 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 dear Amrita, p. 1801; April 15, 2000, Kathleen Hughes, review cherished Asleep, p. 1501; June 1, 2005, Donna Seaman, review taste 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 Tangy Luck, p. 451.

Library Journal, June 15, 1997, Janet Ingraham, dialogue of Amrita, p. 100; Might 1, 2000, Shirley N.

Quan, review of Asleep, p. 156; June 15, 2002, Michelle Reale, review of Goodbye, Tsugumi, owner. 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," examination of Kitchen, p.

3.

Nation, Grand 11, 1997, Diane Simon, consider 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 sharing N. P., p. 61; Jan 23, 1995, review of Lizard, p. 62; June 9, 1997, review of Amrita, p. 39; May 8, 2000, review atlas Asleep, p.

206; July 8, 2002, review of Goodbye, Tsugumi, p. 29; May 30, 2005, review of Hardboiled and Uncivilized Luck, p. 38.

World Literature Today, autumn, 1995, Patricia L. Author, review of Lizard, p. 877; April-June, 2003, Yoshiko Fukushima, "Japanese Literature, or 'J-Literature,' in character 1990s," review of Lizard, holder.

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).