Tomoka Shibasaki is a Japanese author known for contemporary fiction. She is best known for the novel Spring Garden (2014), which won the 151st Akutagawa Prize, and for Nete mo samete mo (2010), which received the Noma Literary New Face Prize. Two of her works, A Day on the Planet (2000) and Nete mo samete mo, have been adapted for film.
Tomoka Shibasaki was born in 1973 in Osaka. While in high school, she began to write fiction. Shibasaki studied at Osaka Prefecture University. After graduation, she worked in an office for four years while continuing to write. In 1998, she was shortlisted for the Bungei Prize.
Her first short story, Reddo, ierō, orenji, burū, appeared in 1999. The following year, she published her first novel, Kyō no dekigoto (A Day on the Planet). In 2003, this was adapted for film by Isao Yukisada.
In 2006, Shibasaki won the MEXT Award for New Artists for Sono machi no ima wa (Today, in that City). The book was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize but did not win. In 2010, she received the Noma Literary New Face Prize for Nete mo samete mo, a first-person novel about love, loss, and identity. She later recalled in an interview, “I wanted to write about the confusion of meeting someone who looks the same but is different.”
In 2014, Shibasaki won the Akutagawa Prize for Haru no niwa (Spring Garden). The novella follows Taro, a divorced man living in a nearly empty apartment block marked for demolition. Isolated since his father’s death, he forms an unusual friendship with his neighbour Nishi.
She tells him about a sky-blue house next door, first seen in a little-known photo book also titled Spring Garden. The house becomes a shared focus for memory, loss, and the possibility of renewal. The book’s precise, photographic descriptions match its themes of transience and lingering hope.
In 2016, Shibasaki joined the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa as a Japan Foundation resident. Pushkin Press published an English translation of Spring Garden by Polly Barton in 2017. In 2018, Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s adaptation of Nete mo samete mo, titled Asako I & II, was shown in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
Her later works include Nijiiro to kun (2015) and Watashi ga inakatta machi de (2012). An English-language collection, A Hundred Years and a Day: 34 Stories, translated by Polly Barton, is scheduled for release in 2025.
Photo credit: pushkinpress.com
Tomoka Shibasaki was born in 1973 in Osaka. While in high school, she began to write fiction. Shibasaki studied at Osaka Prefecture University. After graduation, she worked in an office for four years while continuing to write. In 1998, she was shortlisted for the Bungei Prize.
Her first short story, Reddo, ierō, orenji, burū, appeared in 1999. The following year, she published her first novel, Kyō no dekigoto (A Day on the Planet). In 2003, this was adapted for film by Isao Yukisada.
In 2006, Shibasaki won the MEXT Award for New Artists for Sono machi no ima wa (Today, in that City). The book was nominated for the Akutagawa Prize but did not win. In 2010, she received the Noma Literary New Face Prize for Nete mo samete mo, a first-person novel about love, loss, and identity. She later recalled in an interview, “I wanted to write about the confusion of meeting someone who looks the same but is different.”
In 2014, Shibasaki won the Akutagawa Prize for Haru no niwa (Spring Garden). The novella follows Taro, a divorced man living in a nearly empty apartment block marked for demolition. Isolated since his father’s death, he forms an unusual friendship with his neighbour Nishi.
She tells him about a sky-blue house next door, first seen in a little-known photo book also titled Spring Garden. The house becomes a shared focus for memory, loss, and the possibility of renewal. The book’s precise, photographic descriptions match its themes of transience and lingering hope.
In 2016, Shibasaki joined the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa as a Japan Foundation resident. Pushkin Press published an English translation of Spring Garden by Polly Barton in 2017. In 2018, Ryūsuke Hamaguchi’s adaptation of Nete mo samete mo, titled Asako I & II, was shown in competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
Her later works include Nijiiro to kun (2015) and Watashi ga inakatta machi de (2012). An English-language collection, A Hundred Years and a Day: 34 Stories, translated by Polly Barton, is scheduled for release in 2025.
Photo credit: pushkinpress.com
years of life: 20 October 1973 – present
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