Mariko Asabuki

is a Japanese writer. Her novels have won the Akutagawa Prize and the Bunkamura Deux Magots Prize, and she was named one of Vogue Japan's 2011 Women of the Year.

Early life Asabuki was born in 1984 in Tokyo, Japan, into a literary family that has lived in Tokyo since the Meiji period. Her father, Ryoji Asabuki, is a poet, and several other relatives are literary scholars and translators. Asabuki started writing stories at the age of 3. In 2009 her first novel, Ryūseki (Ruins), was published in the literary magazine Shinchō. In the following year Ryūseki won the Bunkamura Deux Magots Prize and was published in book form by Shinchosha. In 2016 she began serializing a new novel, titled TIMELESS, in Shinchō. From 2016 to 2017 Asabuki wrote the regular "#明日何着よう" ("What Should I Wear Tomorrow?) column for Asahi Shimbun. In 2018 Shinchosha published TIMELESS as a book.

Asabuki's first nonfiction book, a collection of essays written within the previous decade, was published under the title by Chuokoron-Shinsha in 2019. According to Asabuki, the title comes from a fantasy that the back of her desk drawer is connected to the sea, which helps her imagine her work reaching other people even when she writes alone. Writing for the Yomiuri Shimbun, novelist Sayaka Murata described the book's essays as feeling almost like short stories, and the resulting work as a "treasure".

Asabuki regularly collaborates with other writers, artists, and musicians to create site-specific multimedia performances using readings from her work. She has cited Kenzaburo Oe, James Joyce, Mieko Kanai, and Roland Barthes as some of her favorite writers. She is married to designer Kōtarō Watanabe.

Awards and honors 2010: Bunkamura Deux Magots Prize 2011: Vogue Japan Woman of the Year 2011: 144th Akutagawa Prize (2010下)

Works 流跡 (Ryūseki), Shinchosha, 2010, きことわ (Kikotowa), Shinchosha, 2011, TIMELESS, Shinchosha, 2018, 抽斗のなかの海 (Hikidashi no naka no Umi), Chuokoron-Shinsha, 2019,