Taeko Kono
| Taeko KÅno | |
|---|---|
| Native name | æ²³é‡Žå¤šæƒ å |
| Born |
February 24, 1926 (15th year of Taisho) Osaka, Japan |
| Died | January 29, 2015 (aged 88) |
| Occupation | Author |
| Nationality | Japanese |
| Genre | Fiction |
Taeko KÅno (河野 å¤šæƒ å KÅno Taeko, February 24, 1926 – January 29, 2015) is one of the most important and critically acclaimed writers in modern Japanese literature. She is one of a generation of remarkable women writers who made an appearance in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s and who include Kurahashi Yumiko, Mori Mari, Setouchi Harumi, and Takahashi Takako (Japanese name order). Kono also established a reputation for herself as an essayist, playwright and literary critic. By the end of her life she was a leading presence in Japan's literary establishment, one of the first women writers to serve on the Akutagawa Literary Prize committee.[1] Oe Kenzaburo, Japan's Nobel Laureate, described her as the most "lucidly intelligent" woman writer writing in Japan, and the US critic and academic Masao Miyoshi identified her as among the most "critically alert and historically intelligent." A writer who deals with some quite dark themes, she is known to readers in English through the collection of short stories Toddler-Hunting and Other Stories (New Directions, 1996).
Biography
KÅno Taeko was born February 24, 1926 in Osaka, Japan to KÅno Tameji and Yone;[2] her father Tameji operated a business specialising in mountain produce.[1] As a child she suffered from poor health.[1] When she was 15, the Pacific War broke out and her teenage years were dominated by service as a student worker sewing military uniforms and work in a munitions factory.[3]
After the war, she finished her economics degree at Women’s University (currently Osaka Prefecture University), graduating in 1947.[2][4] Kono has written of the new sense of freedom and the high hopes she had after the war.[1] Determined to make a career for herself as a writer, she moved to Tokyo, a city full of literary activities and literary personae, joined a literary group led by Niwa Fumio, and threw herself into writing, at the same time as working full-time. After nearly a decade of trying, during which she suffered several setbacks in her health, including two bouts of tuberculosis, in 1961 the literary magazine ShinchÅsha began publishing her stories, and in 1962 she was awarded ShinchÅsha's "DÅjin zasshi" ("Coterie Magazine") award for her story "YÅji-gari" ("Toddler Hunting" [å¹¼å…ç‹©ã‚Š]). In 1963 her short story "Kani" (Crabs) (蟹) won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize (her story "Yuki" [Snow] had been nominated in 1962).[2] After this KÅno began to produce a stream of remarkable short fiction. In 1965 she married the painter Yasushi Ichikawa.[2] In 1967 she was awarded the Women's Literary Prize for Saigo no toki (Final Moments), in 1968 the Yomiuri Prize for "A Sudden Voice" (ä¸æ„ã®å£°), and in 1980 she won the Tanizaki Prize for "A Year-long Pastoral" (一年ã®ç‰§æŒ). She received a literary prize from the Japanese Art Academy in 1984 and the Noma Literary Prize in 1991 for her novel Miiratori ryÅkitan (Mummy-Hunting for the Bizarre, 1990).[2][4] KÅno's short story "Hone no niku" (Bone Meat) was published in the 1977 anthology Contemporary Japanese Literature (ed. Howard Hibbett), which stimulated interest in her writing amongst readers in English. A trickle of translations into English followed in a variety of anthologies of Japanese women's writing in translation, culminating in the publication of Toddler-Hunting and Other Stories in 1996.[2] KÅno continued to write all her life, and was still writing when she died in hospital in January 2015. In 2014 she was awarded a Bunka KunshÅ, or Order of Culture, which is presented by the Emperor to distinguished artists, scholars, or citizens who make remarkable contributions to Japanese culture, arts and science.
Literary analysis
KÅno's writing explores how "underneath the seemingly normal routines of daily life, one may find hidden propensities for abnormal or pathological behavior", demonstrating that often "reality and fantasy are not so clearly distinguishable from each other".[1] Alternative sexual practices is a theme that permeates KÅno's's writing; sadomasochism, for example, figures in "Toddler-Hunting," and "Ants Swarm" (1964), as well as her novel Miiratori ryÅkitan; and Kaiten tobira (Revolving Door, 1970) features spouse-swapping.[4] KÅno uses these themes to explore sexuality itself and the expression of identity. She combines these elements with illness, childlessness, and the absence of a husband to delve even more deeply into these topics.[5]
More specifically, her writings explore "the struggles of Japanese women to come to terms with their identity in a traditional patriarchal society".[2] Most of her female characters "reject traditional notions" of femininity and gender roles, their frustration "leads them to violent, often antisocial or sadomasochistic ways of dealing with the world".[2] For example, in "YÅjigari", or "Toddler Hunting", one of her most famous stories, she investigates one woman's dislike of children. The protagonist, Hayashi Akiko, is repulsed by little girls but obsessed by little boys—she even imagines a little boy being beaten by his father to the extent that his innards spill out. She also takes pleasure in the sadomasochistic sex she has with her adult partner. One critic has written that the story "turn[s] the myth of motherhood on its head" while another argued that Hayashi was a representation of demonic women who threatened patriarchy itself.[2] In Fui no koe (1968), which one critic has called a "modern woman's Hamlet", KÅno presents the story of Ukiko, whose dead father haunts her. His ghost instructs her to murder the people who are controlling her life. At the end of the story, it is revealed that all of these incidents are only taking place within her mind and she is "trying in her twisted way to bring meaning to her everyday relationships".[2]
Selected list of works
| Year | Japanese Title | English Title | Prizes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 骨ã®è‚‰ | "Flesh of the Bones" | ||
| è¡€ã¨è²æ®» | "Blood and Shell" | ||
| ä¸æ„ã®å£° | "A Sudden Voice" | ||
| ã¿ã„ã‚‰æŽ¡ã‚ŠçŒŸå¥‡èš | "Cruel tale of a hunter become prey" | ||
| 1960 | 「女形é£ã„〠| "Uses of a Female Impersonator" | |
| 1961 | YÅjigari (Japanese: å¹¼å…ç‹©ã‚Š YÅjigari) | "Toddler-Hunting" | |
| 1963 | Kani (Japanese: 蟹 Kani) | "Crabs" | Akutagawa Prize |
| 1967 | Saigo no toki | "The Final Hours" | |
| 1969 | Fui no Koe (Japanese: ä¸æ„ã®å£° Fui no Koe) | "A Sudden Voice" | Yomiuri Prize |
| 1971 | Hone no niku | "Bone Meat" | |
| 1980 | Ichinen no bokka (Japanese: 一年ã®ç‰§æŒ Ichinen no bokka) | "A Year-long Pastoral" | Tanizaki Prize |
Notes
- 1 2 3 4 5 "KÅno Taeko", This kind of woman: ten stories by Japanese women writers, 1960-1976, Eds. and trans. Yukiko Tanaka, Elizabeth Hanson (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982), 44.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 "Taeko Kono", Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 9/12/2002. Retrieved 17 June 2009.
- ↑ "Kono Taeko", The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From 1945 to the present, Eds. J. Thomas Rimer, Van C. Gessel, New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 190.
- 1 2 3 KKo, "KÅno Taeko", Who's who in Contemporary Women's Writing, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2002), 175.
- ↑ Mark Morris, "Japan", The Oxford guide to contemporary world literature, Ed. John Sturrock (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 281.
English translations
- KÅno, Taeko. Toddler-hunting & Other Stories. Trans. Lucy North. New York: New Directions, 1996. ISBN 0-8112-1391-9.
External links
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