Taku Mayumura

Taku Mayumura (眉村 卓 Mayumura Taku, 20 October 1934 - ) is a Japanese science fiction writer who won the Seiun Award for Novel twice. In 2004 his Shiseikan (司政官, one story of the Shiseikan series), written in 1974, was translated into English.. Mayumura is also a young adult fiction writer whose works have been adapted into TV drama, film, and anime.

Biography

Mayumura was born as Murakami Takuji (村上 卓児), at Osaka city, Osaka prefecture in 1934. He graduated from Osaka University in 1957 with a degree in economics. After graduation, he joined a company. While working at this company, he wrote short novels and submitted them to contests in commercial literary magazines.

In 1960, he joined the staff of the SF fanzine Uchuujin. In 1961, he won the Best Story prize in the 1st Kuusou-Kagaku Shousetsu Contest (later the Hayakawa SF Contest) for his novella Kakyuu Idea-Man and made debut in the S-F Magazine by this work.

In 1963, he retired from the company and started working as an independent novelist. Mayumura's first book, the SF novel Moeru Keisha, was published by Touto Shobo in the same year. In 1979, he won the seventh Izumi Kyōka Prize for Literature (JA) and the Seiun Award for his long novel Shoumetsu no Kourin, which is the representative work in his Shiseikan series. In 1996, he won his second Seiun Award for another entry in the Shiseikan series, his long novel Hikishio no Toki.

As a literary theorist, he advocated the Insider Bungaku-ron (Theory of Literature by Insiders).[1] Consistent with this theme, his novels frequently tackle the issues of problematic relations between individuals and the corporate or bureaucratic organizations to which they belong.

Mayumura is also a well-known young adult fiction writer. His representative works in this field are Nazo no Tenkousei and Nerawareta Gakuen etc. These works were adapted into TV Drama series by NHK, and adapted into Cinema too. Other juvenile fictions by Mayumura were adapted into the anime Toki no Tabibito.

In 2002, his wife died of cancer. Mayumura had been writing a very short story every day for his wife, who was in the hospital bedridden since the cancer had been diagnosed. When his stories, which were written each day and numbered, reached to 1778, his wife died. These stories were compiled and published. The film Boku to Tsuma no 1778 no Monogatari, based on this true story, was filmed in 2009 and released in 2011.

As of 2011, Mayumura is a professor of the Graduate School of Osaka University of Arts.

Works in English translation

Works

Novels

Sci-fi and speculative works

Shiseikan series (司政官シリーズ)

The Shiseikan (Administrator) series is summarized as follows: In the distant future, the humans of Earth constitute the Terrestrial Federation; the Terrestrial humans have spread far across outer space and colonized numerous planets and solar systems. The Federation established local governments on those planets to establish law and order among the human settlers, and to mediate between Terrestrials and the sapient aliens who had been originally born, evolved and lived on certain of these planets before the settlers arrived. In the early period, the planets had been ruled by Federation-aligned military juntas; however, the Federation has begun to recall the military administrations and send civilian administrators to govern on their behalf. The troubles faced by these administrators constitute the stories of Shiseikan.

Juvenile

Historical story

Others and uncertain

etc.

Essays

Works adapted into TV drama

Works adapted into cinema film

Works adapted into anime film

Notes

  1. ↑ Mayumura considered that literature was traditionally created by, and written from the viewpoint of, artists who stood outside of the common society; in contrast, his literary theories insisted on the necessity of the "insider", of literature written from the common man's point of view.
  2. ↑ Administrator | Kurodahan Press
  3. ↑ Speculative Japan | Kurodahan Press

References

External links


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