Fumiko Kometani

Fumiko Kometani ( Japanese 米 谷 ふ み 子 , Kometani Fumiko , born November 13, 1930 in Osaka ) is a Japanese writer.

Kometani studied Japanese literature at the Osaka Women's University , but then turned to painting. She took part with an oil painting in an exhibition of the art organization Nikaki and was awarded the Kansaijōryū bijutsushō , the art prize for women in the Kansai region.

In 1960 she received a scholarship to attend an art workshop in Peterborough (New Hampshire) . Here she met the writer Josh Greenfeld , with whom she lived in New York for three years. During this time she married Greenfeld and converted to Judaism. After the family returned to Japan, it turned out that one of their children was mentally disabled, whereupon Kometani embarked on a literary career.

She wrote essays, a. a. about Norman Mailer , Arthur Miller , Art Carney , Zero Mostel and Alan Schneider , and political writings, from the mid-1970s also short stories and novels. She was awarded the Akutagawa Prize in 1985 and the Women's Literature Prize in 1998.

Works (selection)

• Wasabi for breakfast. Stories. be.bra 2011. ISBN 9783861249139

swell

• Chieko Irie Mulhern: Japanese Women Writers: A Bio-Critical Sourcebook , Greenwood Publishing Group, 1994, ISBN 9780313254864 , pp. 190-199