Sayaka Murata

Sayaka Murata (村田沙耶香 Murata Sayaka; born August 14, 1979) is a Japanese writer. She is best known for the international bestseller Convenience Store Woman which has been translated into more than thirty languages worldwide. Murata has won many major literary prizes in Japan, including the Gunzo Prize for New Writers in 2003, the Noma Literary New Face Prize in 2009, the Mishima Yukio Prize in 2013, and the Akutagawa Prize for Convenience Store Woman in 2016. All the English translations of her work are done by Ginny Tapley Takemori. In addition to Convenience Store Woman, Murata's first book to be published in English, Takemori has translated the novels Earthlings and Vanishing World, the short-story collection Life Ceremony, the short stories "Faith", "Survival", and "A Clean Marriage", as well as the New York Times published opinion piece "The Future of Sex Lives in All of Us", among others.

Murata's latest book to be published in English is the 2025 novel Vanishing World, originally published in Japan in 2015. Her latest work in Japanese has been the 2022 short-story collection Faith, of which two stories were translated by Takemori individually.

Biography Murata was born in Inzai, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, in 1979. Her father was a judge and her mother was a housewife. Murata has said she did not have a happy childhood. She started writing stories at age 10. As a child, she often read science fiction and mystery novels borrowed from her brother and mother, and her mother bought her a word processor after she attempted to write a novel by hand in the fourth grade of elementary school. After Murata completed middle school in Inzai, her family moved to Tokyo, where she graduated from Kashiwa High School (attached to Nishogakusha University) and studied art curation at Tamagawa University. thumb

Her first novel, Jyunyū (Breastfeeding), won the 2003 Gunzo Prize for New Writers. In 2013, she won the Mishima Yukio Prize for Shiro-iro no machi no, sono hone no taion no (Of Bones, Of Body Heat, Of Whitening City), and in 2014 the Special Prize of the Sense of Gender Award. In 2016, her 10th novel, Konbini ningen (Convenience Store Woman), won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, and she was named one of Vogue Japan's Women of the Year. Konbini ningen has sold over 1.5 million copies in Japan and in 2018 it became her first book to be translated into English, under the title Convenience Store Woman. It has been translated into more than 30 languages. She has lived in Shinjuku, Tokyo since she was a student. Many of the themes and character backstories in her writing come from her daily observations as a part-time convenience store worker. Murata is also known for her frank depictions of adolescent sexuality in work such as Gin iro no uta (Silver Song) and Shiro-iro no machi no, sono hone no taion no (Of Bones, of Body Heat, of Whitening City). In Satsujin shussan, she depicts a future society which may be seen as dystopic. The title Earthlings focuses on an 11-year-old girl named Natsuki, with her boyfriend and cousin, Yuu, who believe themselves to be aliens due to their tumultuous relationship with their family. The story quickly develops into a harsh tale containing themes of "sexual abuse, murder, and cannibalism." In this novel, Keiko, a part-time convenience store worker, is confronted by societal expectations to marry and pursue a traditional career.

Asexuality and fictosexuality Many of Murata's main heroines find themselves in asexual relationships, such as Natsuki in Earthlings and Keiko in Convenience Store Woman. Asexuality is a theme that coincides with questioning the standards society typically expects from citizens, a notion that Murata explores frequently. and has written novels that include themes of asexuality and fictosexuality, such as Vanishing World.

Global warming and climate change Murata addresses the subject of global warming in her short story, "Survival", which was included in an anthology titled Tales of Two Planets: Stories of Climate Change. The story details a dystopian Japanese society and describes what the world could look like if climate change is left unaddressed.