KURAHASHI YUMIKO

(1935–2005)

   Kurahashi Yumiko, nee Kumagai, was a novelist and author born in Kochi Prefecture. She graduated from a dental hygiene school and was accepted into Meiji University where she also attended graduate school. While in graduate school she published the novel Parutai (1960; tr. Partei, 1961) in the Meiji University newspaper. Parutai was reprinted in the literary journal Bungakkai (Literary World) and was nominated for the Akutagawa Ryunosuke Prize. The following year it was published as a novel and received the Women’s Literature Prize, and in 1963 she was awarded the Tamura Toshiko Prize. After marrying a television producer, she devoted her time to raising their two daughters, but came back into the literary world in the late 1970s and received the Izumi Kyoka Literary Prize in 1983. Toward the end of her life, she turned her attention to translating children’s literature. She died of heart disease.