Hiromi Itō
Hiromi Itō ( Japanese 伊藤 比 呂 美 , Itō Hiromi ; born September 13, 1955 in Itabashi , Tokyo ) is a Japanese poet and writer . She has won a number of literary prizes, such as the Gendaishi Techo Prize (1978).
Life
Hiromi Itō studied literature at Aoyama Gakuin University . During her student days she wrote poetry. In 1978 she received the prestigious Gendaishi Techo Prize. 1983 Marriage to the Yiddist and comparativeist Masahiko Nishi (* 1955). Their first daughter Kanoko was born in 1984, the second daughter Sarako in 1986 and the third daughter Tome in 1995. Itō and Nishi divorced in 1991, but continue to live together. Itō published Papa wa Gokigen Naname ("Papa is in a bad mood") with Nishi in 1989 , Onaka, Hoppe, Oshiri ("Tummy, Cheek and Bottom ") in 1994 and Katei no Igaku ("Medicine for household use") in 1995 , as well as three volumes on the subject of raising children and family life.
After turning to essays and prose literature (for example, 1999; La niña , awarded the Noma literature prize ; Nihon no Fushigi na Hanashi , 2004; Midori no Obasan , 2005), the author has also been making poems again since 2005. For Kawara Arekusa (2005; "Wild Grass on the Riverside ") she received the Takami Jun Prize in 2006 , for Togenuki: Shin Sugamo Jizō Engi (2007; "The Thorn Extractor: The New Buddha Omen of Sugamo") 2008 the Hagiwara Prize Sakutarō Prize and the Murasaki Shikibu Literature Prize .
Itō has international experience (1982 and 1988, for example, stayed in Poland) and appears internationally as a poet. On the occasion of the symposium on Japanese women writers in Germany (1990) she attended a. a. Berlin . In mid-October 2002 she gave a reading in Innsbruck's Literaturhaus am Inn. The Tokyo native has also explored Mongolia and the Japanese region, for example Okinawa and the southern Kumamoto , to which she first traveled in 1984. In 1997 she moved to California . She currently lives with Harold Cohen, an artist, and their daughters in Encinitas , near San Diego .
Literary work
The writer, widely recognized in Japan today, revolutionized contemporary Japanese poetry in the late 1970s with her innovative language, her sometimes disturbing statements and her provocative artistic temperament. The word fetishist is an impressive performance artist who reads less than appears in her poetry readings (first important readings in 1980 in a temple in Tōkyō and in Okinawa in 1985): as a “shaman of poetry” ( shi no miko ).
While in the 1980s she was a leading figure in women's lyric poetry ( josei-shi ), which was not least because of her , she later occupied herself with the essay ( e.g. 1985; Yoi Oppai, Warui Oppai ) and prose (1999; La Niña ) too. Her subjects are the female body, sexuality and childbirth, problems with mothers and men. Her poem " Killing Kanoko" ( Kanoko koroshi ) caused a sensation , in which she deals with experiences of abortion and pregnancy in her own tone of cheerful compassion. It also covers natural phenomena and the oral tradition of the Native American people. Some interpreters want to understand Itō as a "nature writer" (Morita). In Japan and internationally, Itō's texts are not only read as eco-poetry or as testimony to a pronounced feminist consciousness and the consequent denunciation of the Japanese patriarchy (an example is the poem “Harakiri” translated into German; contained in the anthology “Mother to kill”) , but as word art. The texts, which often fall back on the mythological and archaic and on regional, indigenous traditions, inspired artists such as the photographer Araki Nobuyoshi and many young talents of the lively contemporary poetry scene in Japan. Itō recently received international acclaim for her work in the US-Japan Women's Journal in the form of a special edition dedicated to her (32, 2007).
German translations
- Hiromi Itō: kill mother. Poems and prose . Residenz Verlag, Salzburg and Vienna 1993.
- Hiromi Itō and Masahiko Nishi: The Anarchic Cinderella. Fairy tales as medicine for household use . Residenz Verlag, Salzburg and Vienna, 1999.
literature
- Jeffrey Angles: Itō Hiromi, Writing Woman . In: US-Japan Women's Journal , 32: Special Issue on Itō Hiromi, pp. 7-16, 2007
- Jeffrey Angles: Reclaiming the Unwritten. The Work of Memory in Itō Hiromi's Watashi wa Anjuhimeko de aru (I Am Anjuhimeko) . In: US-Japan Women's Journal , 32: Special Issue on Itō Hiromi, pp. 51-75, 2007.
- Lisette Gebhardt : 'The shamelessness of the naive shaman'. Itō Hiromi's literary world [ The Shamelessness of the Naive Shaman: Itō Hiromi's Literary World ]. In: Frauen in der Literaturwissenschaft , Rundbrief 29 / März, Universität Hamburg, Literaturwissenschaftliches Seminar, p. 26, 1991.
- Lisette Gebhardt: The pleasure objects settle accounts. The theme of sexuality in the work of contemporary Japanese women writers [ The Vengeance of the Objects of Lust. Sexuality in the Works of Contemporary Japanese Woman Writers ]. In: Münchner Japanischer Anzeiger. A quarterly journal (MJA) . Pp. 16-35, Iudicium Verlag, Munich 1994.
- Kyōko Ōmori: Finding Our Own English. Migrancy, Identity, and Language (s) in Itō Hiromi's Recent Prose . In: US-Japan Women's Journal , 32: Special Issue on Itō Hiromi. Pp. 92-114, 2007.
- Joanne Quimby: Itō Hiromi, Writing Woman . In: US-Japan Women's Journal , 32: Special Issue on Itō Hiromi. Pp. 17-41, 2007.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Itō, Hiromi |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | 伊藤 比 呂 美 (Japanese) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Japanese writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | September 13, 1955 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Itabashi , Tokyo |