"The family without some problems does not exist, for there are cracks in all human relationships," she said during a panel discussion with her readers.
Apart from Japan and Korea, Taiwan is the country in which she is most popular. Publisher Rye Field (
Yu's books are also published by French publisher Picquier and US publisher Welcome Rain. Yu has been chosen by Barnes and Noble for inclusion in the Discovery Series of New Great Authors, along with 15 other writers from around the world, which is yet to be published.
Life, the first volume of her most autobiographical series, has become a bestseller in Japan with over 500,000 copies sold. The book looks at her decision to become a single mother after being abandoned by her son's father, a married man, and of her time spent with cancer-stricken ex-lover Higashi Yukata. Higashi spent a period toward the end of his life taking care of the heart-broken, pregnant Yu. And Yu, after giving birth to her son, takes care of the dying Higashi. For Yu, the three people seem to become a family reborn. The birth of her son gives a new light to her writing.
Life has been followed by Soul, about her struggle with Higashi's cancer, and To Live, about her life with her son as a new family. These books are all written in the first person and are intimate accounts of her personal life in the Japanese tradition of the private novel (
But how far can such private novels go? How can these works stay literary and not become a form of voyeurism.
There is difference between reality and my writing, Yu said. I write according to my memory of reality. My memory begins the process of fictionalization from the moment I start writing. So, she said, the "private novels" are all "fiction with a literary nature. ... Their similarity to reality does not necessarily make them true or real," she said.
Recently, Yu took up jogging, and will even race a marathon in Korea. Her grandfathers were both famous marathon runners in Korea, but they suffered political persecution because of their leftist views.
"For me, running is similar to writing," Yu said. "You stand on the ground, but for a few seconds as you run, both feet are off the ground -- it is like flying," she said. "I write about reality, and imagine myself as a bird who doesn't fly, but I continues to flap my wings to enjoy the few seconds off the ground. Literature, for me, is the wind under my wings," she said.
A television miniseries by NHK of Yu Miri's novel "Rouge" will air in Taiwan on PTS (
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