Miura, Tetsuo 1931-

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Miura, Tetsuo 1931-

PERSONAL:

Born 1931, in Aomori Prefecture, Tohoku, Japan. Education: Attended Waseda University.

CAREER:

Novelist. Also worked as a teacher.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Akutagawa Prize, 1961, for Shinobugawa; Noma Literary Prize, 1976, for Kenju to jugo no tanpen; Japan Literature Grand Prize, 1982, for Shonen sanka; Osaragi Jiro Prize, 1985, for Byakuya o tabisuru hitobito; Kawabata Prize, 1990, for Jinenjo.

WRITINGS:

Shinobugawa (title means "A Shameful Lineage"), Shinchosha Showa 36 (Tokyo, Japan), 1960, translation by Andrew Driver published as Shame in the Blood: A Novel, Shoemaker & Hoard (Emeryville, CA), 2007.

Odoriko nora, Kodansha (Tokyo, Japan), 1974.

Kenju to jugo no tanpen (title means "The Pistol and Fifteen Other Stories"), Kodansha (Tokyo, Japan), 1976.

Miura Tetsuo tampen shosetsu zenshu, Kodansha (Tokyo, Japan), 1977.

Miura Tetsuo jisen tampen shu, Yomiuri Shimbun (Tokyo, Japan), 1978.

Fuyu no gan, Bungei Shunju (Tokyo, Japan), 1980.

Hamanasu monogatari, Kodansha (Tokyo, Japan), 1982.

Orooro zoshi, Kodansha (Tokyo, Japan), 1982.

Shonen sanka (title means "Hymn of the Young Men"), Bungei Shunju (Tokyo, Japan), 1982.

Gyoan no umi, Bungei Shunju (Tokyo, Japan), 1983.

Haha no shozo: Tanpen meisakusen, Kososha (Tokyo, Japan), 1983.

Kaniya no miyage, Fukutake Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1983.

Byakuya o tabisuru hitobito (title means "The White-Night Travelers"), Shinchosha (Tokyo, Japan), 1984.

Ryogan no michikusa, Kodansha (Tokyo, Japan), 1984.

Kon, Sakuhinsha (Tokyo, Japan), 1985.

Haru no yako: zuihitsushu, Kodansha (Tokyo, Japan), 1985.

Miura Tetsuo jisen zenshu, Shinchosha (Tokyo, Japan), 1987.

Michizure, Shinchosha (Tokyo, Japan), 1991.

Tanpenshu mozaiku, Shinchosha (Tokyo, Japan), 1991.

Toki no seseragi: Wakaki hi no Tsuiso Kiko, Kodansha (Tokyo, Japan), 1994.

Also author of Jinenjo (title means "Japanese Yam").

ADAPTATIONS:

Shinobugawa was adapted into a film (English title The Long Darkness) in 1972 by Kei Kumai (writer and director) and Keiji Hasebe (writer). It won the 1972 Mainichi Film Concours awards for best actress, best film, best film score, and best sound recording, and the Kinema Junpo Awards in 1973 for best film, best director, and best screenplay.

SIDELIGHTS:

Tetsuo Miura, widely recognized as Japan's best short-story writer, was born in 1931 in Aomori prefecture of Tohoku. He attended Waseda University in Tokyo but dropped out and became a teacher. However, a series of family tragedies changed his life. The youngest of five, he was shocked and horrified when his two brothers disappeared and his two sisters committed suicide, and he came to the conclusion that he and his family were cursed. He went back to university and began writing as a way to come to terms with his world.

Miura won his first literary prize while a student at Waseda University, and his first novel, Shinobugawa (which means "A Shameful Lineage"), was published in 1960. Its advent was a complete success for Miura. He won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, the Japanese literary prize established in 1935 and awarded semiannually for the best work of fiction by a promising new Japanese writer. With this affirmation of his work, Miura decided that writing could be a way to combat his family curse, and he began a long series of novellas and short stories based on his life and historical events. The Akutagawa Prize was the first of many awards for Miura. In 1976 he won the Noma Literary Prize for Kenju to jugo no tanpen, and in 1982 he was awarded the Japan Literature Grand Prize for Shonen sanka. In 1985 he received the Osaragi Jiro Prize for Byakuya o tabisuru hitobito, and in 1990 he was awarded the Kawabata Prize for Jinenjo. Miura's writing ascribes to what was in the past the traditional Japanese ethos in aesthetic expression, that of facing the inevitable tragedies of life with resignation and accepting the illusive nature of happiness.

In 1972 Shinobugawa was adapted by Kei Kumani and Keiji Hasebe into an award-winning film with the English title The Long Darkness. It won 1972 Mainichi Film Concours awards for best actress, best film, best film score, and best sound recording, and Kinema Junpo Awards in 1973 for best film, best director, and best screenplay. Director Kei Kumai was nominated for the Golden Award at the Moscow Film Festival, also in 1973.

Shinobugawa was first translated into English over forty-five years after its initial publication as Shame in the Blood: A Novel. It is composed of six episodes or stories, some of which overlap, written as a diary or confession. Each story is told by an unnamed narrator, although the narrative closely follows the events in Miura's own life. Through the course of the book, the protagonist's life slowly crumbles around him as he allows the fear of his "cursed blood" to destroy him despite his struggles against it. The episodes are not presented in a linear fashion, but jump back and forth, sometimes skipping over long periods of time, and often repeating significant events, as though each was part of a lifelong meditation.

Episodes cover the narrator's childhood, much like Miura's with two brothers who disappear, two sisters who commit suicide, and a younger sister who is blind. The narrator remembers meeting, courting, and marrying his wife, and the conversations he had with her during that time expressing his fear of having children and passing on his tendency to sadness and familial tragedy. In another episode he witnesses his father's death and meditates on his evolving responses to it.

In her review for The Voice, Helen Nevius found Shame in the Blood to be "intense, emotionally intricate, and offer[ing] an interesting glimpse into Japanese culture. Shame in the Blood is an intense exploration of one man struggling with a traumatic past." The critic for Publishers Weekly said the book was "an intriguing and kaleidoscopic view of a life"; Andrew Weiss thought it was "uncommonly affecting" in his review for Library Journal; Chas Bowie wrote in the Portland Mercury Online that it was "a fine book"; and the critic for New York Magazine Online commented that Shame in the Blood was "a best-seller kind of read." Michelle Quint, in her review of the book for the San Francisco Chronicle Online, praised the "beauty in the simplicity of [Miura's] storytelling," while Nick DiMartino, in his review for Novel World, enthused that Shame in the Blood was "simply astonishing, plain, and straightforward in an artless way, but packed with unusual twists and turns and told with a quiet urgency."

Benjamin Lytal, in his review for the New York Sun Online, declared Miura to be "an outstanding writer, and one who should be of particular interest to Western readers." Andrew Rankin's review for the Japan Times Online also showed great admiration for Miura and praised his work as reflective of the traditional Japanese aesthetic of showing resignation in the face of tragedy: "Miura's achievement has been to sustain that sentiment in his experience of the modern world. … Those who lament the loss of a distinctively Japanese brand of sensibility from modern fiction—melancholic, poetic, piercingly sad and serene at the same time—will find what they are looking for in these beautiful stories."