Kiyoko Murata

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Kiyoko Murata (Murata Kiyoko), born in 1945 in Yahata, Fukuoka, Japan, is a Japanese writer of fiction. Her well-known works include Nabe no naka (In the Pot), Kokyō no wagaya (My Old Home), and Yūjokō. She has won major prizes such as the Akutagawa Prize, the Noma Literary Prize, and the Yomiuri Prize. The government has honored her with the Medal with Purple Ribbon and the Order of the Rising Sun, and she joined the Japan Art Academy.

Murata grew up working various jobs after junior high school. She married in 1967 and began writing while raising her children. Her first major prize came in 1976 for Suichū no koe (Voice under Water). She was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize in 1986 for Netsuai and Meiyū but did not win. She won on her third Akutagawa nomination in 1987 for Nabe no naka, a novella about a grandmother who shares family stories with her visiting grandchildren. This story was the title piece of her first short-story collection, which also included Suichū no koe, Netsuai, and Meiyū. Akira Kurosawa wrote a screenplay based on Nabe no naka, and he directed the film Rhapsody in August (1991). An English translation of Nabe no naka appeared in a 2015 collection of Japanese women writers.

Murata continued to publish novellas and novels. Her 1990 work Shiroi yama (White Mountain) won the 29th Women's Literature Prize; 1994’s Warabi no kō won and was later adapted into a 2003 film by Hideo Onchi; 1998’s Ryūhi gyotenka won the 49th MEXT Arts Award in literature. In 2007 she received the Medal with Purple Ribbon. Her short-story collection Kokyō no wagaya was published by Shinchosha in 2010 and won the 63rd Noma Literary Prize. Her 2013 novel Yūjokō won the 65th Yomiuri Prize in fiction. She received the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, in 2016 and was named to the Japan Art Academy in 2017.

Around 2011 she was diagnosed with uterine cancer and later used that experience as material for her novel Yakeno made.