Oba, Minako (1930–)
Oba, Minako (1930–)
Japanese novelist, poet, playwright and essayist. Born 1930 in Tokyo, Japan; father was a physician; mother was a teacher; majored in English literature; married an engineer.
During WWII, was sent to Hiroshima immediately after the bombing as a member of a rescue party; lived with husband in Alaska for 11 years (1959–70); published 1st book, The Three Crabs (1968), which received the Akutagawa Prize; other works, which explore gender stereotypes and relationships between men and women, include Funakuimushi (1969), Sabita kotoba (1971), Urashimaso (1977, also pub. in English and related to her experience in Hiroshima), Stereotype (1980), A Theory on Man from the Standpoint of a Woman. Tsuda Umeko (1990), and Once There Was a Woman (1994).
See also Michiko N. Wilson, Gender is Fair Game: Rethinking the Female in the Works of Oba Minako (Sharpe, 1999).