Mieko Kawakami

is a Japanese writer and poet. She is best known for her 2019 novel Breasts and Eggs, an expanded and reworked version of her 2008 novella . Following the international success of Breasts and Eggs multiple of her earlier novels and most of her works since have been translated into English, among many other languages, and distributed internationally. Among them are Heaven and All the Lovers in the Night (2011), as well as Sisters in Yellow (2023), her first novel released since Breasts and Eggs. Her work is known for her "philosophical explorations of gender, class and ethics in modern society" and slice of life style. She was raised by her single mother with the family struggling with poverty. She released three J-pop albums but quit her musical career in 2006 to focus on writing. Kawakami reportedly quit her music career after finding out how little artistic control she would have about her work. She published her first novella, My Ego Ratio, My Teeth, And The World, in 2007, earning her a Tsubouchi Shoyo Prize for Young Emerging Writers. Before winning the Akutagawa Prize in 2008 for her second novella, Chichi to Ran, Kawakami was known in Japan primarily as the blogger behind "Critique of Pure Sadness" which she started to promote her singing career. The book was officially published in 2008 and went on to sell more than 250.000 copies. The edited volume of these interviews, titled was published in 2017. In 2019 the two authors hosted a joint reading. Kawakami has described Murakami's place in Japanese literature as special, saying he is the only Japanese author that isn't read from an orientalist perspective by Western audiences. In 2016 Kawakami was featured in Granta Japan and Waseda Bungaku'''s collaborative "Best of Young Japanese Novelists" volume.

2020–present: International breakthrough In 2020, the English translation of Natsu Monogatari was published under the title Breasts and Eggs by Europa Editions. Katie Kitamura reviewed it favorably for The New York Times, observing, "Mieko Kawakami writes with a bracing lack of sentimentality, particularly when describing the lives of women." The novel would go on to achieve both critical and commercial success internationally. Heaven was translated into English and published by Europa Editions in 2021. It was shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize. That year the English translation of All the Lovers in the Night, translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd, was published by Europa Editions and got to be a finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction.

Kawakami's eighth novel, Sisters in Yellow was originally serialized in the Yomiuri Shinbun, a Japanese newspaper, The book was eventually published by Knopf in a translation by Hitomi Yoshio and Laurel Taylor in early 2026.

Adaptations Film While, after its initial success, Chichi to Ran was said to be adapted for the screen, Chihara's background is in graphic design and he designed multiple book covers for Kawakami in the past. In adapting the seven-page short story into a feature film the two of them worked together, leading to Kawakami being credited as a co-writer on the movie. Ice Cream Fever was preceded by a spin-off short film centered on one of the main movie's characters called I SCREAM FEVER. This was followed by an adaptation of All the Lovers in the Night by starring Yukino Kishii and Tadanobu Asano in 2026. The film was screened at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival.

Theater In December 2025, actor Izumi Aoyagi debuted Wisteria and the Three Women at Lumine 0 in Shinjuku. The one-woman show is based on the short story of the same name. The production marks the fourth collaboration of Kawakami with Takahiro Fujita's theater company Mum&Gypsy.

Writing style and themes Kawakami's prose fiction can be categorized as literary realism, while her poetic work has veered into surrealism and incorporated fantasy elements. In a 2019 interview Kawakami compared prose fiction with poetry and in the light of the 2011 triple disaster highlighted short poems' ability to be memorized in their entirety for "people [who] lost everything". She credits Ichiyo Higuchi as having made the biggest impact on her work, calling her "one of the first women to become a professional writer in Japan". In 2022 she said that Higuchi's Takekurabe changed her life.

Feminism Kawakami is an outspoken feminist, seeing as "a way of life" rather than an ideology, informing both her writing and her interpersonal relationships. On the other hand books like Sisters in Yellow also serve to criticize the short-comings of contemporary feminist movements. She is married to the author Kazushige Abe, with whom she has a son.