Yoko Ogawa

Yōko Ogawa (小川 洋子) is a Japanese writer.

Biography
Ogawa was born in Okayama, Okayama Prefecture, graduated from Waseda University, and lives in Ashiya, Hyōgo, with her husband and son. Since 1988, she has published more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction. Her novel The Professor's Beloved Equation has been made into a movie. In 2006 she co-authored "An Introduction to the World's Most Elegant Mathematics" with Masahiko Fujiwara, a mathematician, as a dialogue on the extraordinary beauty of numbers.

A film in French, L'Annulaire (The Ringfinger), directed by Diane Bertrand, starring Olga Kurylenko (the new Bond girl in her film début ) and Marc Barbé, with a soundtrack by Beth Gibbons, was released in France in June 2005 and subsequently made the rounds of the international film festivals; the film, some of which is filmed in the Hamburg docks, is based in part on Ogawa's Kusuriyubi no hyōhon (薬指の標本), translated into French as L'Annulaire (by Rose-Marie Makino-Fayolle who has translated numerous works by Ogawa, as well as works by Akira Yoshimura and by Edogawa Rampo, into French). (The dockland setting and a significant subplot owe nothing to Ogawa's novella. Interestingly, in conversation with the audience after a showing of the film at the Edinburgh Film Festival, 2006, Diane Bertrand said that she was not sure that she understood the book.)

Kenzaburō Ōe has said, "Yoko Ogawa is able to give expression to the most subtle workings of human psychology in prose that is gentle yet penetrating." The subtlety in part lies in the fact that Ogawa's characters often seem not to know why they are doing what they are doing. She works by accumulation of detail, a technique that is perhaps more successful in her shorter works; the slow pace of development in the longer works requires something of a deus ex machina to end them. The reader is presented with an acute description of what the protagonists, mostly but not always female, observe and feel and their somewhat alienated self-observations, some of which is a reflection of Japanese society and especially women's roles within in it. The tone of her works varies, across the works and sometimes within the longer works, from the surreal, through the grotesque and the —sometimes grotesquely— humorous, to the psychologically ambiguous and even disturbing. (Hotel Iris, one of her longer works, is more explicit sexually than her other works and is also her most widely translated.)

Prizes

 * 1988 Kaien Prize for her debut Disintegration of the Butterfly (Agehacho ga kowareru toki, 揚羽蝶が壊れる時)
 * 1990 Akutagawa Prize for Pregnancy Calendar (Ninshin karendaa, 妊娠 カレンダー)
 * 2004 Yomiuri Prize for The Professor's Beloved Equation (Hakase no aishita sushiki, 博士の愛した数式; translated as The Gift of Numbers)
 * 2004 Izumi Prize for Burafuman no maisō, ブラフマンの埋葬
 * 2006 Tanizaki Prize for Meena's March (Mīna no kōshin, ミーナの行進)

Works in English translation

 * The Man Who Sold Braces (Gibusu o uru hito, ギブスを売る人, 1998); translated by Shibata Motoyuki, Manoa, 13.1, 2001.
 * Transit (Toranjitto, トランジット, 1996); translated by Alisa Freedman, Japanese Art: The Scholarship and Legacy of Chino Kaori, special issue of Review of Japanese Culture and Society, vol. XV (Center for Inter-Cultural Studies and Education, Josai University, December 2003): 114-125. ISSN 0913-4700
 * The Cafeteria in the Evening and a Pool in the Rain (Yūgure no kyūshoku shitsu to ame no pūru, 夕暮れの給食室と雨のプール, 1991); translated by Stephen Snyder, The New Yorker, 9/2004. read
 * Pregnancy Diary (Ninshin karendā, 妊娠カレンダー, 1991); translated by Stephen Snyder, The New Yorker, 12/2005. read
 * The Gift of Numbers (Hakase no ai shita sūshiki, 博士の愛した数式, 2003); translated by Yosei Sugawara, New York : Picador, 2006. ISBN 0-312-42597-X - Not currently available on amazon.com, and not really clear whether it was ever published at all; however, recently resurfaced in a different translation (see below).
 * The Diving Pool: Three Novellas (Daibingu puru, ダイヴィング・プール, 1990; Ninshin karendā, 妊娠カレンダー, 1991; Dormitory, ドミトリイ, 1991); translated by Stephen Snyder, New York: Picador, 2008. ISBN 0-312-42683-6
 * The Housekeeper and the Professor (Hakase no ai shita sūshiki, 博士の愛した数式, 2003); translated by Stephen Snyder, New York : Picador, 2008. ISBN 0-312-42780-8 (years ago announced as "The Gift of Numbers" in a different translation)
 * Hotel Iris (Hoteru Airisu, ホテル・アイリス, 1996; available in English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Greek, Italian, Slovene)

Other works

 * Most frequently translated (though not yet in English)
 * The Ring Finger (Kusuriyubi no hyōhon, 薬指の標本, 1994; available in French, German, Greek, Italian)
 * Love in the Margin (Yohaku no ai, 余白の愛, 1991; available in French, German)
 * The Museum of Silence (Chinmoku hakubutsukan, 沈黙博物館, 2000; available in French, German)


 * Other works (some translated to French)
 * Kanpeki na byōshitsu, 完璧な病室, 1989
 * Agehachō ga kowareru toki, 揚羽蝶が壊れる時, 1989, Kaien Prize
 * Same nai kōcha, 冷めない紅茶, 1990
 * Shugā taimu, シュガータイム, 1991
 * Angelina sano motoharu to 10 no tanpen, アンジェリーナ―佐野元春と10の短編, 1993
 * Yōsei ga mai oriru yoru, 妖精が舞い下りる夜, 1993
 * Hisoyaka na kesshō, 密やかな結晶, 1994
 * Rokukakukei no shō heya, 六角形の小部屋, 1994
 * Anne Furanku no kioku, アンネ・フランクの記憶, 1995
 * Shishū suru shōjo, 刺繍する少女, 1996
 * Yasashī uttae, やさしい訴え, 1996
 * Kōritsui ta kaori, 凍りついた香り, 1998
 * Kamoku na shigai, midara na tomurai, 寡黙な死骸みだらな弔い, 1998
 * Fukaki kokoro no soko yori, 深き心の底より, 1999
 * Gūzen no shukufuku, 偶然の祝福, 2000
 * Mabuta, まぶた, 2001
 * Kifujin A no sosei, 貴婦人Aの蘇生, 2002
 * Burafuman no maisō, ブラフマンの埋葬, 2004, Izumi Prize
 * Yo ni mo utsukushī sūgaku nyūmon, 世にも美しい数学入門, 2005 (An Introduction to the World's Most Elegant Mathematics)
 * Inu no shippo o nade nagara, 犬のしっぽを撫でながら, 2006
 * Otogibanashi no wasuremono, おとぎ話の忘れ物, 2006 (illustrated)
 * Mīna no kōshin, ミーナの行進, 2006 (illustrated), Tanizaki Prize
 * Umi, 海 2006
 * Ogawa Yōko taiwa shū, 小川洋子 対話集, 2007 (conversations)
 * Monogatari no yakuwari, 物語の役割, 2007