Kono Taeko

Kono Taeko, 1965

Kōno Taeko ( Japanese 河野 多 惠子 ; born April 30, 1926 in Osaka Prefecture ; † January 29, 2015 in Tokyo ) was a Japanese writer.

Life

Kōno was born in 1926 as the fourth of five children. She was often ailing in her youth and developed an interest in the works of Izumi Kyōka and Tanizaki Jun'ichirō at this time .

She studied economics after the end of the war and worked until the outbreak of tuberculosis in 1957. From 1960 she published her first short stories; the first major success was boy hunt in 1962. Kōno received several literary awards, such as the Tanizaki Jun'ichirō Prize , the Akutagawa Prize , the Noma Literature Prize and the Yomiuri Literature Prize .

Kōno lived in Tokyo in the early 2000s . In 2002 she was named a person with special cultural merits , in 2014 she was awarded the Order of Culture .

interpretation

Their precise descriptions of situations and psychological reactions let the threatening shine through behind the everyday without fuss. The often disturbing insights into horror or personal hells can come from memories of traumatic war experiences or be sadomasochistic fantasies or disturbances from inter-sex relationships. The protagonists in Kono's stories are often women and children.

Works

• Yōjigari ( 幼 児 狩 り ; 1962)
  • Boy hunting. Narratives . Hijiya-Kirschnereit (trans.), Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-458-14360-2
• Kani ( 蟹 ) - Akutagawa Prize 1963
• Hone no niku
• Fui no koe ( 不意 の 声 ; 1968) - Yomiuri Literature Prize 1968
  • Meatbones . Galrev Verlag, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-925-23001-7
• Saigo no toki ( 最後 の 時 ) - Women's Literature Prize 1966
• Kaitentobira ( 回 転 扉 , "revolving door"; 1970)
• Ichinen no bokka ( 一年 の 牧歌 , "Idyll of a year"; 1980) - Tanizaki Jun'ichirō Prize 1980
• Miira tori ryōkitan ( み い ら 採 り 猟 奇 譚 ; 1990) - Noma Literature Prize 1991
  • Risky desires. Novel . Sabine Mangold and Hayasaki Yukari (ex.). Japanese library at Insel Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-458-16554-1
• Gojitsu no hanashi ( 後 日 の 話 ; 1999) - Mainichi Art Prize 2000
• Han shoyūsha ( 半 所有者 ; 2001) - Kawabata Yasunari Literature Prize 2002

literature

• Siegfried Schaarschmidt and Michiko Mae (eds.): Japanese literature of the present. Hanser Verlag, Munich 1990. ISBN 3-446-15929-0

Web links

• Literature by and about Kōno Taeko in the catalog of the German National Library
• Biography at booksfromjapan.jp
• The language of masochistic violence in Kôno Taeko, essay by Emerald King (Eng.)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Award-winning writer Kono dies at 88 ( Memento of the original from January 30, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus, Kōno is the family name, Taeko the first name.