Satoko Tsushima (30 March 1947 – 18 February 2016), known by her pen name Yūko Tsushima (津島 佑子 Tsushima Yūko), was a Japanese fiction writer, essayist and critic. Tsushima won many of Japan's top literary prizes in her career, including the Izumi Kyōka Prize for Literature, the Noma Literary New Face Prize, the Noma Literary Prize, the Yomiuri Prize and the Tanizaki Prize. The New York Times called Tsushima "one of the most important writers of her generation." Her work has been translated into over a dozen languages.

Early life

Tsushima was born in Mitaka, Tokyo, the third child (younger of two daughters) of famed novelist Osamu Dazai and Michiko Ishihara, a teacher at a girls' school. Her father committed suicide when she was one year old; she later drew on the aftermath of this experience in writing her short story "The Watery Realm".

Career

While attending Shirayuri Women's University she published her first fiction. At age 24 she published her first collection of stories, Carnival (Shaniku-sai). A prolific writer, she was the winner of several literary prizes. In 1972 her story Pregnant with a Fox (Kitsune wo haramu) was a runner-up for the Akutagawa Prize. She was awarded the Izumi Kyōka Prize for Literature in 1977 for Kusa no Fushido (Bedchamber of Grass), and the first annual Noma Literary New Face Prize for Hikari no ryōbun (Territory of Light) in 1979. In 1983 she was awarded the Kawabata Yasunari Literature Prize for her short story Danmari ichi (The Silent Traders), and in 1986 she won the Yomiuri Prize for her novel Yoru no hikari ni owarete (Driven by the Light of the Night). In 1998 she was awarded the 34th Tanizaki Prize and the 51st Noma Literary Prize for her novel Hi no yama – yamazaruki (Mountain of Fire: Account Of A Wild Monkey). In 2002 she won the Osaragi Jiro Prize for Warai ookami (Laughing Wolf).

Writing style

Tsushima's work is often characterized as feminist, though she did not apply this label to her own work. Her writing explores the lives of marginalized people, usually women, who struggle for control of their own lives against societal and family pressures. She has cited Tennessee Williams as a literary influence. Unlike many of her contemporaries, whose writing about women tended to assume a nuclear family, Tsushima wrote about women who had been abandoned by family members. Her stories, several of which draw on her own experience as a single mother, focus on the psychological impact of abandonment on those left behind.

Works translated into English