Amy Yamada
Biography. Yamada Amy (born Yamada Futaba 山田双葉) was born in Itabashi, Tokyo and moved frequently after the age of 2, due to the nature of her father's job. Over the course of her childhood, she lived in Sapporo City, Kaga City, Ashida City, Kanuma City. This transient lifestyle forced her to confront issues of separation and bullying, issues that many of her protagonists also deal with. According to her interview with the Japanese magazine "Bungei," during middle school she was moved by African-American soul music and began to read any novels she could find written by  black people, or featuring black people. She held a job in the Roppongi district of Tokyo, an area rich with foreigners. In high school, she was a member of the Arts, Mountaineering, and Literature Club. Her favorite authors were Boris Vian and Francoise Sagan. After graduating from high school in 1977, she entered Meiji University's Literature Department, but dropped out before graduating. Yamada had a short stint writing and drawing manga under her real name (Yamada Futaba). Her manga debuted in "Manga Erogenica" and she was featured as a "dōjin" (fanfic) and female erotic manga artist. While working part -time, she published "Sugar Bar" ("Shugā Bā" 1981), "Miss Doll" ("Misu Dōru" 1986), and "Yokosuka Freaky" ("Yokosuka Furīkī" 1986). She began writing novels in 1980. Though her works garnered some attention, even receiving praise from Japanese literary critic , she only achieved widespread recognition in 1985, when "Bedtime Eyes" won the Bungei Prize and was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize. In writing "Bedtime Eyes", Yamada drew upon her experiences with black people and black culture and combined them with the Japanese literary tradition. In Yamada's second collection of works, "Jesse's Spine," Yamada depicts the experiences of a woman who  is learning to adjust to life with her lover's child from another relationship. The writing style of this work has been compared to William Saroyan's novel, "Papa You're Crazy". Through her depiction of the child's perspective on the world, she was nominated yet again for the Akutagawa Prize (and subsequently again for "The Piano Player's Fingers"), though she did not receive it. In 1996, "Trash" was published in English translation by Kodansha International (translator: Sonya L. Johnson). In May 2006, three of Yamada's novellas ("Bedtime Eyes" 「ベッドタイム･アイズ」, "The Piano Player's Fingers" 「指の戯れ」 and  Jesse「ジェシーの背骨」) were published in English translation (translators: Yumi Gunji and Marc Jardine) as a single volume by St Martin's Press under the collective title "Bedtime Eyes". Legacy. In her short novels "Classroom for the Abandoned Dead," "Afterschool Music," and "I Can't Study," Yamada tackles the topics of childhood life, bullying, and school life. In an interview with "Bungei Shunjū" upon winning the Akutagawa Prize, Risa Wataya and Hitomi Kanehara named Yamada's "Afterschool Music" as one of their major influences, explaining that her works were one of the greatest depictions of modern Japan.