{"id":40294,"date":"2022-05-13T14:41:16","date_gmt":"2022-05-13T12:41:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/literaturfestivalberlin.de\/authors\/kazumi-yumoto\/"},"modified":"2022-05-13T20:02:25","modified_gmt":"2022-05-13T18:02:25","slug":"kazumi-yumoto","status":"publish","type":"authors","link":"https:\/\/literaturfestival.com\/en\/authors\/kazumi-yumoto\/","title":{"rendered":"Kazumi Yumoto"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kazumi Yumoto<\/strong> was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1959 and got into literature via music. She studied composition at Tokyo College of music and during this time wrote opera libretti and plays for radio and television. Her first novel \u201cNatsu no niwa\u201d (Engl. \u201cThe Friends\u201d, 1996) appeared in 1992 to international acclaim. In a direct an warmhearted style it tells the story of three adolescents in contemporary Japan who want to learn more about death and decide to spy on an old man whom they assume will die soon, but things develop in an unexpected manner. A fragile friendship grows between Kiyama, Yamashita and Kawabe, in which they learn a lot about life, tolerance and the dignity of getting old. Yumoto approaches the frightening and fascinating \u2018event\u2019 of death in a vital and uninhibited way. What does a dead body look like? How many times have we taken breath? What happens afterwards? The book is narrated in a clear and quiet fashion. Other issues, such as the mother\u2019s alcoholicism or the troubling war memories of the old man, are also discreetly incorporated. In this way, a children\u2019s novel is built up which excludes nothing, which touches on the horrible without dramatising it, which treats a delicate issue lightly but never frivolously (Neue Z\u00fcricher) and which quietly brings a strange culture closer. \u201cNatsu no niwa\u201d received the Boston Globe-Horn Award (1997) and was nominated for the German Juvenile\u2019s Literature Prize (1996); it was made into a film by Shinji Somai (1996).<\/p>\n

Again and again Yumoto takes up the difficult experiences of growing up and the conflicts that for children can be associated with it. In doing so she never avoids serious questions such as illness, death, suicide and religion, as in the book for young adults, \u201cPopura no aki\u201d (1997; Engl. \u201cThe Letters\u201d, 2002), her third novel that was translated into German. Chiaki, a young woman, remembers how she moved into the \u201cPoplar-House\u201d with her mother when she was six years old. There the eccentric yet loveable landlady Mrs Yanagi helped her to fight her anxieties \u2013 which above all had to do with the to her incomprehensible fact of her father\u2019s death. When the old lady tells her that she will convey letters to the dead when dying, Chiaki starts writing letters to her father dealing with her pain and her questions. Very often in Yumoto\u2019s novels old people play a fundamental role. \u201cI believe that there is a kind of relationship with children that is only feasible for adults who at the same time are not the parents, and that such a relationship can strongly influence a child\u2019s course in a certain part of its life.\u201d Kazumi Yumoto lives in Tokyo.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 international literature festival berlin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"template":"","jct-role":[1080],"jct-origin":[363,721],"jct-ilb-years":[598],"class_list":["post-40294","authors","type-authors","status-publish","hentry","jct-role-author","jct-origin-japan","jct-origin-japan-2","jct-ilb-years-2004-en"],"yoast_head":"\nKazumi Yumoto – international literature festival berlin<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/literaturfestival.com\/en\/authors\/kazumi-yumoto\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Kazumi Yumoto – international literature festival berlin\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Kazumi Yumoto was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1959 and got into literature via music. She studied composition at Tokyo College of music and during this time wrote opera libretti and plays for radio and television. Her first novel \u201cNatsu no niwa\u201d (Engl. \u201cThe Friends\u201d, 1996) appeared in 1992 to international acclaim. 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