Yu Miri (柳美里): From the Stage to the Novel

Introduction

Yu Miri (柳美里, born 1968) is a playwright and novelist. A zainichi Korean who writes in Japanese and holds South Korean nationality, she began in the theater and won the 37th Kishida Kunio Drama Award in 1993 for Festival for the Fish (魚の祭) before turning mainly to fiction. Internationally she is now best known for the novel Tokyo Ueno Station, whose English translation won the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2020.

Early Life and Career

Yu Miri was born on June 22, 1968, in Tsuchiura, Ibaraki Prefecture, and her family moved to Yokohama before she turned one. Her father worked in pachinko parlors. Her parents separated, and in 1979 she moved with her mother to Kitakamakura. She entered a Yokohama high school in 1983, was bullied, and left after a year.

In 1984 she joined the musical company Tokyo Kid Brothers (東京キッドブラザース) as its youngest member, working as an actress and assistant director. She then founded her own theater unit, Seishun Gogatsuto (青春五月党). Sources give 1986 or 1987 for its founding and 1988 for her debut as a playwright, with Mizu no Naka no Tomo e (水の中の友へ).

The Kishida Prize-Winning Work: Festival for the Fish (魚の祭)

In 1993, Yu Miri received the 37th Kishida Kunio Drama Award for Festival for the Fish (魚の祭), sharing the prize that year with Akio Miyazawa. According to Japanese Wikipedia, she was the youngest winner of the prize up to that time.

The play premiered in 1992 and is a family story that begins when the family gathers after a younger brother's funeral. It was revived in 2020 by the company MODE, directed by Osamu Matsumoto, at AI・HALL in Japan.

Major Works

Yu Miri's plays include Seibutsuga (静物画, 1991), Himawari no Hitsugi (向日葵の柩, 1993), and Green Bench (1994). Seishun Gogatsuto returned in 2018, after a gap of 24 years, with Machi no Katami (町の形見).

As a novelist, she won the 116th Akutagawa Prize, awarded in 1997, for Family Cinema (家族シネマ). Gold Rush (ゴールドラッシュ) followed in 1998 and won the Kiyama Shohei Literary Prize.

Tokyo Ueno Station (JR上野駅公園口) was published in 2014. Its narrator, Kazu, born in Fukushima in 1933, has died and cannot rest, and haunts the park near Ueno Station in Tokyo, where he had lived as a homeless man. Morgan Giles's translation won the National Book Award for Translated Literature in 2020.

Yu Miri moved to Minamisoma, Fukushima, in 2015 and to its Odaka district in 2017. In 2018 she opened a bookstore, Full House (フルハウス), at her home there, along with a small theater space, La MaMa ODAKA.

How to Experience Her Work

The Play in English: Festival for the Fish appears in Half a Century of Japanese Theater II: 1990s, Part 2 (Kinokuniya).

Novels and Stories in English:

Tokyo Ueno Station, translated by Morgan Giles (Tilted Axis, 2019; Riverhead, 2020)
The End of August, translated by Morgan Giles (Riverhead, 2023)
Gold Rush, translated by Stephen Snyder (Welcome Rain, 2002)
"Full House," translated by Melissa L. Wender, in Into the Light (2011)
"Specimens of Families," translated by Abbie (Miyabi) Yamamoto, in Zainichi Literature (2018)

Plays in Japanese: Uo no Matsuri (魚の祭) has been published by Kadokawa Bunko, and Machi no Katami (町の形見) by Kawade Shobo Shinsha.

Theater Library (戯曲図書館): Our platform offers resources for discovering Japanese theatrical scripts. Explore our collection to find works by other Kishida Prize-winning playwrights.

Yu Miri (柳美里) | Kishida Prize-Winning Playwright Guide