Tsumura was born in Osaka, Japan in 1978. While commuting to school she read science fiction novels, especially the work of William Gibson, Philip K. Dick, and Kurt Vonnegut, and began writing her own novel, Man'ītā (Maneater), while still a third-year university student.[1]Man'ītā won the 21st Dazai Osamu Prize and was later published in book form under the title Kimi wa eien ni soitsura yori wakai.[2][3]
Career
In her first job out of college, Tsumura experienced workplace harassment and quit after ten months to retrain and find another position, an experience that inspired her to write stories about young workers.[4] In 2008 Tsumura won the Noma Literary New Face Prize for her book Myūjikku buresu yū!! (Music Bless You!!),[5] and in 2009 her novel Potosu raimu no fune (The Lime Pothos Boat), about a young woman experiencing precarious work, won the 140th Akutagawa Prize.[2][6] Japanese literature scholar Kendall Heitzman described The Lime Pothos Boat as a "triumph" that "carefully depicts with great nuance a small cast of characters with competing interests and desires."[7] Tsumura's book Wākāzu daijesuto (Workers' Digest), published in 2011, won the 28th Oda Sakunosuke Prize,[8] and in 2013 her short story "Kyūsuitō to kame" ("The Water Tower and the Turtle") won the 39th Kawabata Yasunari Prize.[9] The Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology recognized Tsumura's work with a New Artist award in 2016.[10]
Tsumura's writing often employs Kansai-ben, a distinctive Japanese dialect spoken in Osaka and surrounding cities.[11]
Konoyoni tayasui shigoto wa nai [ : この世にたやすい仕事はない] (There's No Such Thing As An Easy Job), Nikkei Business Publications Inc., 2015, ISBN9781635576917, translated into English by Polly Barton, Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc. 2020-21. This is the first of Tsumura's books to be translated into English.[a][b]
^Iwata-Weickgenannt, Kristina (27 November 2014). "Kirino Natsuo's Metabola, or the Okinawan stage, fractured selves and the precarity of contemporary existence". In Iwata-Weickgenannt, Kristina; Rosenbaum, Roman (eds.). Visions of Precarity in Japanese Popular Culture and Literature. Routledge. pp. 24–42. ISBN9781317619109.
^Heitzman, Kendall (3 June 2016). "20: The rise of women writers, the Heisei I-novel, and the contemporary bundan". In Hutchinson, Rachael; Morton, Leith Douglas (eds.). Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature. Routledge. pp. 285–298. ISBN9781317647713.
