(1930- ) novelist, short-story writer, essayist, poet, playwright
Oba Minako was born in Tokyo to Shiina Saburo and Mutsuko. From a very young age, (Oba nurtured an interest in reading. Her love of books was so intense that, even as she fled World War II air raids, she always grabbed a book to pass the time. (Oba witnessed the mushroom cloud of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and tended radiation sickness victims as they escaped the city. After the war, she studied American literature at Tsuda Women’s College, where she met (Oba Toshio, whom she later married. The turning point in Oba’s life came when her husband was stationed in Alaska for 11 years. Removed from the restrictions placed on women in Japan, (Oba had the freedom to travel and to pursue a graduate-level education, although she never earned a degree.
Oba completed her first short story, “A Picture with No Composition,” in 1963 while she was attending a graduate art program at the University of Wisconsin. Four years later, she wrote “The Rainbow and the Floating Bridge” while attending a graduate art program at the University of Washington in Seattle and then “The Three Crabs” once she returned home to Alaska. In 1969,Oba wrote “Fireweed,” notable for its Alaskan setting and her depiction of an untraditionally ferocious nature. Her major works include The Junk Museum (1975), Urashima Grass (1977), Without a Shape (1982), and Birds Singing (1985), none of which have yet been translated into English.
Like the novelists oe Kenzaburo and Gabriel garda mArquez, Oba is noted for reusing characters and events from earlier stories. She frequently portrays strong female protagonists who challenge social mores, particularly with regard to women’s roles. She has won numerous awards for her fiction, including the Gunzo New Writer’s Prize, the Akutagawa Prize, and the Tanizaki Jun’ichiro Prize.
Other Works by Oba Minako
“The Pale Fox.” In Roberta Rubinstein and Charles R. Larson, eds., Worlds of Fiction. New York: Macmillan, 1993.
“The Smile of a Mountain Witch.” In Stories by Contemporary Japanese Women Writers. Translated by Noriko Mizuta Lippit and Kyoko Irye Selden. Ar-monk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1982.
A Work about Oba Minako
Wilson, Michiko Niikuni. Gender Is Fair Game: (Re)Thinking The (Fe)Male in the Works of Oba Minako. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1999.
