Yoko Tawada

I have a soft spot for writers who refuse to stay in one language, and Yoko Tawada is the patron saint of that restlessness. Born in Tokyo, schooled at Waseda, then off to Germany where she just casually started writing fiction in German too, scooping up the Akutagawa Prize at home and the Goethe Medal abroad like it was nothing. That dual-language tightrope walk floors me, because most of us fumble in our mother tongue alone. What I love is the sense that she never trusts a word to behave; she turns each one over, holds it to the light, and lets the gap between Japanese and German become its own strange territory. Novelist, playwright, essayist, eternal border-crosser. Quiet, patient, fiercely original. She is exactly the kind of mind I want more of in the world.

Yoko Tawada is a Japanese-born novelist, playwright, and essayist who writes in both Japanese and German. Born on March 23, 1960, in Tokyo, she studied at Waseda University before relocating to Europe, where she built a career spanning two literary traditions. She is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards in both Japan and Germany, including the Akutagawa Prize (1992), the Chamisso Prize (1996), the Izumi Kyoka Literary Prize (2000), the Tanizaki Jun'ichiro Prize (2003), and the Goethe Medal (2005).

Name (English)

Yoko Tawada

Name (Japanese)

多和田葉子

Reading

たわだ ようこ

Born

March 23, 1960 (age 66)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Aries / Rat

Origin

Tokyo, Japan

Occupation

Novelist / Playwright / Author / Essayist / German Studies Scholar

University

Waseda University

Awards & achievements

• 1991 — Gunzo New Writer's Literary Prize
• 1992 — Akutagawa Prize
• 1996 — Chamisso Prize
• 2000 — Izumi Kyoka Literary Prize
• 2002 — Bunkamura Deux Magots Literary Prize
• 2003 — Tanizaki Jun'ichiro Prize
• 2003 — Ito Sei Literary Prize
• 2005 — Goethe Medal

• Official sitehttp://yokotawada.de
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%9A%E5%92%8C%E7%94%B0%E8%91%89%E5%AD%90
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q451058

Tags

• From Tokyo
• Novelist
• Playwright
• Author

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.