Japanese novelist Sayaka Murata wins the Akutagawa Prize. Murata, then 36, shared the stage with Naomi Watanabe, 'the Japanese Beyonce' and one of Vogue Japan’s Women of the Year. (Kyodo News via AP)
Japanese novelist Yoko Tawada. Publishers in the US & UK are seeing an audience for translated novels. Tawada’s The Emissary won the 2018 National Award for translation. (Yuka Ando/Kyodo News via AP)Japanese writer Chisako Wakatake at the Museum of Modern Japanese Literature in Tokyo. Wakatake, 63, won the Akutagawa Prize in 2017 for I’ll Live by Myself. (Kenichiro Kojima/Kyodo News via AP)Japanese novelists Mariko Hayashi, Natsuo Kirino and Mitsuyo Kakuta at a literature symposium in Paris. A wave of female writers is winning prizes and being chosen for translation. (Kyodo News via AP)Sweden's King Gustaf VI Adolf congratulates Japanese novelist Yasunari Kawabata after presenting the Nobel Prize for literature in Stockholm, Sweden. (AP Photo)Haruki Murakami autographs a copy of Killing Commendatore. While people associate Japanese literature with male writers, things are changing with a wave of female writers. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)Japanese novelist Kenzaburo Oe receives the Nobel Prize for literature in Stockholm, Sweden. A wave of female writers is now winning prizes and being translated. (AP Photo/Tobbe Gustavsson)