Female Chinese Writer Wins Akutagawa Prize

The 139th Akutagawa and Naoki prizes were announced on July 15, with the Akutagawa prize going to Yang Yi for "A Morning When Time Blurs" and the Naoki prize going to Areno Inoue for "To the Coal Face."

Yi, the winner of the Akutagawa prize, is 44 years old and a native of Harbin, China. She came to Japan approximately twenty years ago as a student. She is currently employed as a Chinese language teacher in addition to working on her writing. She was previously nominated for the Akutagawa prize for her novel, "Wang-chan," but unfortunately was not chosen. Her work is not translated from Chinese, but conceived and written in Japanese. Li was pleased that her work, which required mastery of a foreign language, was considered and chosen for the Akutagawa prize this time. The winning work, "A Morning When Time Blurs," is set in China in 1988 and describes the growing pains of two Chinese university students. It provides a vibrant description of the reality of contemporary China.

Inoue, who won the Naoki prize, was born in 1961. In 1989, she received the first Feminist prize for "My Nureyev." Inoue was also previously nominated for the Naoki prize for her novel "Bacon," but was not selected. The term "coal face" in the title of this winning work refers to a setting in which no forward progress is possible. It is a novel of inexhaustible beauty about a man and woman shaken by a fateful encounter.


* Some of the book titles are tentative translations.