Mitsuyo Kakuta

Mitsuyo Kakuta (角田 光代, Kakuta Mitsuyo, born 8 March 1967) is a prolific Japanese author born in Yokohama. She is currently engaged in translating The Tale of Genji into modern Japanese.

She made her debut while still a student at Waseda University's Faculty of Literature, with Kōfuku na yūgi (A Blissful Pastime), and received the Kaien Prize for New Writers in 1990. After publishing two well-received novels in 2002, Ekonomikaru paresu (Economical Palace) and Kūchū teien (Hanging Garden), she went on to win the Noma Literary New Face Prize, and the Naoki Prize for Woman on the Other Shore in 2004.

The Eighth Day, translated into English in 2010, received the 2007 Chūō Kōron Literary Prize and has been made into a television drama series and a film. Both her 2012 books – her novel Kami no tsuki and her volume of short stories, Kanata no ko (The Children Beyond) – were prizewinners. Altogether she has written over 80 works of fiction.

Mitsuyo Kakuta is married to the fellow writer Takami Itō. She stated in an interview in October 2015 that she is translating the 11th-century classic The Tale of Genji into modern Japanese and this will likely take her three years. In the same interview she mentioned Shuichi Yoshida, Yoko Ogawa and Kaori Ekuni as contemporary Japanese writers whom she could recommend.

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