Yoko Tawada

Yōko Tawada (多和田葉子 Tawada Yōko, born March 23, 1960) is a Japanese writer currently living in Berlin, Germany.

She writes in both Japanese and German.

Tawada has won numerous literary awards, including the Akutagawa Prize, the Tanizaki Prize, the Noma Literary Prize, the Izumi Kyōka Prize for Literature, the Gunzo Prize for New Writers, the Goethe Medal, the Kleist Prize, and a National Book Award.

Tawada was born in Nakano, Tokyo.

Her father was a translator and bookseller.

She attended Tokyo Metropolitan Tachikawa High School.

In 1979, at the age of 19, Tawada took the Trans-Siberian Railway to visit Germany.

She received her undergraduate education at Waseda University in 1982 with a major in Russian literature, and upon graduation moved to Hamburg, Germany, where she started working with one of her father's business partners in a book distribution business.

Tawada's writing career began in 1987 with the publication of Nur da wo du bist da ist nichts—Anata no iru tokoro dake nani mo nai (Nothing Only Where You Are), a collection of poems released in a German and Japanese bilingual edition.

She left the business to study at Hamburg University, and in 1990 she received a master's degree in contemporary German literature.

Her first novella, titled Kakato o nakushite (Missing Heels), received the Gunzo Prize for New Writers in 1991.

In 1993 Tawada won the Akutagawa Prize for her novella Inu muko iri, which was published later that year with Kakato o nakushite and another story in the single volume Inu muko iri.

Arufabetto no kizuguchi also appeared in book form in 1993, and Tawada received her first major recognition outside of Japan by winning the Lessing Prize Scholarship.

Several other books followed, including Seijo densetsu (Legend of a Saint) in 1996 and Futakuchi otoko (The Man With Two Mouths) in 1998.

Tawada won the 1996 Adelbert von Chamisso Prize, a German literary award for non-native speakers of German.

In 1997 she was writer in residence at Villa Aurora, and in 1999 she spent four months as the Max Kade Foundation Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

An English edition of the three-story collection Inu muko iri, translated by Margaret Mitsutani, was published in 1998 but was not commercially successful.

In 2000 she received her doctorate in German literature from the University of Zurich, where Sigrid Weigel, her thesis advisor, had been appointed to the faculty.

She won the Izumi Kyōka Prize for Literature for her 2000 book Hinagiku no ocha no baai, and both the Sei Ito Literature Prize and the Tanizaki Prize in 2003 for Yogisha no yako ressha (Suspects on the Night Train).

Tawada took a bilingual approach to her 2004 novel Das nackte Auge, writing first in German, then in Japanese, and finally producing separate German and Japanese manuscripts.

The novel follows a Vietnamese girl who was kidnapped at a young age while in Germany for a youth conference.

In 2005, Tawada won the prestigious Goethe Medal from the Goethe-Institut for meritorious contributions to German culture by a non-German.

In 2006 Tawada moved to Berlin, where she currently resides.

Portions of these books were translated into English by Margaret Mitsutani and collected in a 2009 book titled Facing the Bridge.

An English version, translated from the German manuscript by Susan Bernofsky, was published by New Directions Publishing in 2009 under the title The Naked Eye.

From January to February 2009, she was the Writer-in-Residence at the Stanford University Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages.

In 2011, inspired by the story of the orphaned polar bear Knut, Tawada wrote three interlocking short stories exploring the relationship between humans and animals from the perspective of three generations of captive polar bears.

As with previous work, she wrote separate manuscripts in Japanese and German.

In 2011 the Japanese version, titled Yuki no renshūsei, was published in Japan.

It won the 2011 Noma Literary Prize and the 2012 Yomiuri Prize.

New Directions Publishing reissued the Mitsutani translation of the single Akutagawa Prize-winning novella in 2012 under the title The Bridegroom Was a Dog.

Tawada won the 2013 Erlanger Prize for her work translating poetry between Japanese and German.

In 2014 the German version, titled Etüden im Schnee, was published in Germany.

In 2014 her novel Kentoshi, a near-future dystopian story of a great-grandfather who grows stronger while his great-grandson grows weaker, was published in Japan.

An English edition of Etüden im Schnee, translated by Susan Bernofsky, was published by New Directions Publishing in 2016 under the title Memoirs of a Polar Bear.

It won the inaugural Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.

In 2016 she received the Kleist Prize, and in 2018 she was awarded the Carl Zuckmayer Medal for services to the German language.

An English version, translated by Margaret Mitsutani, was published in the US by New Directions Publishing in 2018 under the title The Emissary. and as The Last Children of Tokyo by Portobello Books/Granta Books in the UK.

Also in 2018, she received the National Book Award for Translated Literature (the inaugural year of that award) for her novel The Emissary, translated by Margaret Mitsutani.

In 2022, her novel Scattered All Over the Earth, also translated by Mitsutani, was a National Book Award for Translated Literature finalist.