Yukiko Motoya (本谷有希子): Theater and Fiction

Introduction

Yukiko Motoya (本谷有希子) is both a playwright and a novelist, with major awards in each field.

Motoya won the 53rd Kishida Kunio Drama Award in 2009 for Super Happy, Thanks So Much, Seriously! (幸せ最高ありがとうマジで！), sharing it with Ryuta Horai. She later won the 154th Akutagawa Prize, awarded in 2016, for Irui Kon'in Tan (異類婚姻譚), which has appeared in English as "An Exotic Marriage."

Early Life and Career

Born in 1979 in Ishikawa Prefecture on Japan's Sea of Japan coast, Yukiko Motoya acted in stage productions after finishing high school. In September 2000, she launched the theater company Gekidan, Motoya Yukiko (劇団、本谷有希子 -- literally "Theater Company, Yukiko Motoya"), for which she writes and directs.

She won the 10th Tsuruya Nanboku Drama Award in 2007 for Sounan, (遭難、).

Her parallel career as a novelist began with a story published in 2002. She went on to win the Noma Literary New Face Prize in 2011, the Oe Kenzaburo Prize in 2013, and the Mishima Yukio Prize in 2014.

The Kishida Prize-Winning Work

Super Happy, Thanks So Much, Seriously! (幸せ最高ありがとうマジで！) -- 53rd Kishida Kunio Drama Award, 2009

Motoya wrote and directed the play, which was staged in 2008 as a PARCO production at the PARCO Theater in Tokyo (October 21 to November 9), with further performances in Kurashiki and Osaka. Kodansha published the script in 2009. The English title used here is a literal rendering of the Japanese.

Major Works

Theater

Rambo to Taiki (乱暴と待機) -- A translation by Kyoko Yoshida and Andy Bragen was published as Vengeance Can Wait (Samuel French, 2012).
Sounan, (遭難、, 2006) -- Winner of the Tsuruya Nanboku Drama Award.
Super Happy, Thanks So Much, Seriously! (幸せ最高ありがとうマジで！, 2008) -- Her Kishida Prize-winning play.

Literature

Irui Kon'in Tan (異類婚姻譚, 2016) -- Her Akutagawa Prize-winning story, about a full-time housewife who notices that she and her husband are coming to look alike. Motoya has said she wanted to depict the eeriness of couples growing similar.
The Lonesome Bodybuilder (trans. Asa Yoneda, Soft Skull Press, 2018) -- An English collection of eleven stories. In the title story, a housewife takes up bodybuilding and her physique changes dramatically, but her workaholic husband never notices. The collection also includes "An Exotic Marriage."

How to Experience Their Work

To explore Yukiko Motoya's world and discover other Japanese playwrights, visit our script search page. For English-speaking readers, her short story collection The Lonesome Bodybuilder (published by Soft Skull Press) is a place to start, and the play Vengeance Can Wait has been published in translation.

Yukiko Motoya (本谷有希子) | Kishida Prize-Winning Playwright Guide