Minae Mizumura is a novelist who challenges the conventional boundaries of national literature. Though educated in the United States and initially writing in English, she chose to compose in Japanese, demonstrating a profound commitment to the language and its literary tradition. Her novels are acclaimed for being both highly readable and historically resonant, often incorporating formalistic innovations like unique printing formats and interspersed English texts or illustrations. Mizumura also engages in essay and literary criticism, notably analyzing the decline of Japanese under English influence and advocating for the preservation of Japan's great modern literary heritage.
Minae Mizumura's An I-Novel is a semi-autobiographical work that takes place over the course of a single day in the 1980s. This formally daring novel radically broke with Japanese literary tradition and offers a luminous meditation on how a person becomes a writer.
Now in paperback, this Osaragi Jiro Award-winning novel demystifies the notion of the selfless Japanese mother and the adult daughter honor-bound to care for her. Mitsuki Katsura, a Japanese woman in her mid-fifties, is a French-language instructor at a private university in Tokyo. Her husband, whom she met in Paris, is a professor at another private university. He is having an affair with a much younger woman. In addition to her husband's infidelity, Mitsuki must deal with her ailing eighty-something mother, a demanding, self-absorbed woman who is far from the image of the patient, self-sacrificing Japanese matriarch. Mitsuki finds herself guiltily dreaming of the day when her mother will finally pass on. While doing everything she can to ensure her mother's happiness, she grows weary of the responsibilities of being a doting daughter and worries she is sacrificing her chance to find fulfillment in her middle age. Inheritance from Mother not only offers insight into a complex and paradoxical culture, but is also a profound work about mothers and daughters, marriage, old age, and the resilience of women.
First published in Japan in 2008 by Chikumashobo Ltd., Tokyo. entitled Nihongo ga horobiru toki: Eigo no seiki no naka de.