Yū Miri

Yū Miri (born June 22, 1968, Yokohama, Japan) is an award-winning Japanese author of Korean descent whose works are unsparing in their depiction of destructive family relationships involving individuals who are unable to communicate or connect with others.

Yū’s family was dysfunctional. Her father was a compulsive gambler who physically abused his wife and children; her mother was a bar hostess who frequently took the teenaged Yū along to parties, where Yū was occasionally molested. One of Yū’s sisters became an actress in pornographic films. As a child of Zainichi (ethnic Koreans born in Japan but not having Japanese citizenship) parents, Yū became so confused about languages—when to use Japanese or Korean—that she developed a stutter. Because of her ethnicity and because of her difficult home life, Yū was often ostracized and victimized by other children at school. Her parents separated when she was 5 years old; she repeatedly tried to commit suicide as a teenager and was eventually expelled from high school.

Yū became an actress and soon turned to writing plays. She found that distilling her past through writing could help her come to terms with her pain. In 1994 her first novel, Ishi ni oyogu sakana (“The Fish Swimming in the Stone”), was serialized in the journal Shinchō, which was a springboard for many young writers. Her novel Furu hausu (1996; “Full House”) won the Noma Prize for the best novel by a new author, and her novel Kazoku shinema (1997; “Family Cinema”) established her reputation and won her public recognition. Kazoku shinema tells the story of a young woman’s reunion with long-estranged relatives to film a semifictional documentary. Written in clear and simple language, the novel alternates briskly between real-life scenes and those being filmed for the movie. Driving the novel’s story was Yū’s belief that many people hold their families together by acting out prescribed roles within the social unit. By having her characters play familial roles within their own film, she deftly underscored both the reality and the fiction of family life.

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Kazoku shinema won the Akutagawa Prize in 1997 and also attracted controversy. Although Kazoku shinema and her other works were written in Japanese, Yū continued to feel uncomfortable as a non-Japanese living in Japan. Kazoku shinema was enthusiastically embraced in South Korea after being translated into Korean; it also became a best seller in Japan but was vehemently attacked by members of the conservative press, who felt that it had portrayed the Japanese as fools. Yū’s defenders argued that such criticism revealed an ethnic bias.

Among Yū’s other works are the novels Gōrudo rasshu (1998; Gold Rush) and Hachigatsu no hate (2004; “The End of August”). She also wrote many plays and an autobiography (Inochi, 2003; “Life”).