Draft:Erika Kobayashi

• Comment: So, the titles of all her books published in Japan, and all her exhibitions held in Japan, and both her screenplays, are not in Japanese but in English?
  Is being a member of the Japan Pen Club worthy of note?
  What has been disinterestedly written (by critics, curators, academics, etc) about Kobayashi's works? Hoary (talk) 07:10, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
  
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  Thank you so much for this feedback! I used the translated names of her works for the sake of readability, but I see now that this is probably the wrong approach. I will look at some articles about Japanese authors and follow their approach to the bibliography. Esmb17 (talk) 17:58, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

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• Comment: So, the titles of all her books published in Japan, and all her exhibitions held in Japan, and both her screenplays, are not in Japanese but in English?
  Is being a member of the Japan Pen Club worthy of note?
  What has been disinterestedly written (by critics, curators, academics, etc) about Kobayashi's works? Hoary (talk) 07:10, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
  
  Thank you so much for this feedback! I used the translated names of her works for the sake of readability, but I see now that this is probably the wrong approach. I will look at some articles about Japanese authors and follow their approach to the bibliography. Esmb17 (talk) 17:58, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Erika Kobayashi
Born	24 January 1978 Tokyo, Japan
Occupation	Author, artist
Education	University of Tokyo Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies
Relatives	Tsukasa Kobayashi (father), Akane Higashiyama (mother)

Erika Kobayashi (小林エリカ, Kobayashi Erika) is a Japanese author, esperantist, multi-media installation artist, and manga artist. She began publishing her work professionally in 2001 and is still active today, recently working alongside translator Brian Bergstrom.

Biography

Personal life

Erika Kobayashi (小林エリカ, Kobayashi Erika) was born on January 24, 1978 in Tokyo, Japan to Tsukasa Kobayashi (小林司, Kobayashi Tsukasa) and Akane Higashiyama (東山あかね, Higashiyama Akane), two high-profile Japanese translators of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. She was raised in Ōizumi (大泉), a small town within the Nerima City Ward (練馬区, Nerima-ku) on the outskirts of Tokyo. In 2020 Kobayashi revealed that she has a child.

Career

In 2001 She received a masters degree from the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies (東京大学・学際情報学府, Tōkyō Daigaku Gakusai Jōhōgakubu). Subsequently, she began publishing her work.

In 2003 Kobayashi was appointed as the Japan Foundation's Banff Center artist in residence, and, in 2006 as the Nomura International Cultural Foundation's artist in residence at EAA in Estonia, and at CAMAC in France. In 2010 alongside fellow Japanese esperantists Mina Tabei, Kasane Nogawa, and Hisae Maeda, Kobayashi founded the Tokyo based studio “kvina”, and began producing LIBRO de KVINA, a book series in Japanese, English, and Esperanto. In 2023, Kobayashi was selected by AC Japan as lead illustrator for Plan International's "I Didn't Even Know I had a Different Life" (私に違う人生があることすら知らなかった), an advertising campaign that advocates for women's education globally, lead by the NGO's Japanese branch.

Literary Focuses

Kobayashi's novels explicate the nature of histories and memories of radiation across generations through her exploration of the lives of women. Chiefly through the relationships of mothers, daughters, and granddaughters, and birth and death. Her examinations seek to make that which is invisible, (namely illness, radiation, and the lives of the isolated) visible. In addition to the scientific history of radiation, Kobayashi takes interest in the events with which its history is deeply entangled; the atomic bomb, the Great East Japan Earthquake, the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and the Tokyo Olympics of 1964 and 2020 are all topics that her works have investigated. Many of Kobayashi's exhibitions are based on her literary works, expanding upon them visually through depictions of light and luminance, again making the unseen, seen.

Publications and exhibitions

Bibliography

Japanese title	English title	Publisher	Year	Notes
ネバーソープランド	Never Soapland	Kawade Shobo Shinsha	2001
空爆の日に会いましょう	Let’s meet on the day of the airstrike	Magazine House	2002
終わりとはじまり	The End and the Beginning	Magazine House	2006
この気持ちいったい何語だったらつうじるの?	Dear Kitties	Little More	2011
親愛なるキティーたちへ	Unforgettable	Seidosha	2013
忘れられないの	Children of Light 1	Little More	2013
マダム・キュリーと朝食を	Breakfast with Madame Curie	Shueisha	2014	Nominated for the 27th Yukio Mishima Prize, and 151st Ryunosuke Akutagawa Prize
光の子ども 2	Children of Light 2	Little More	2016
彼女は鏡の中を覗きこむ	She looks into the mirror	Shueisha	2017
光の子ども3	Children of Light 3	Little More	2019
トリニティ、トリニティ、トリニティ	Trinity, Trinity, Trinity	Shueisha	2019	Winner of the 7th Iron Dog Heterotopia Literary Award
最後の挨拶	His Last Bow	Kodansha	2021	Winner of the 44th Japan Sherlock Holmes Award "Encouragement Award"
闇は光の母わたしはしなないおんなのこ	Darkness is The Mother of Light, I am a Silent Woman	Iwasaki Shoten	2021

Translated Works

Language	Japanese title	Translated title	Translator	Publisher	Year	Notes
French	トリニティ、トリニティ、トリニティ	Trinity, Trinity, Trinity	Mathilde Tamae-Bouhon	DALVA	2021
English	トリニティ、トリニティ、トリニティ	Trinity, Trinity, Trinity	Brian Bergstrom	Astra House	2022	Winner of the 2022 Japan-U.S. Friendship Foundation Japanese Literature Translation Award
English	"SUNRISE" 日出ずる	SUNRISE: Radiant Stories	Brian Bergstrom	Astra House	2023

Exhibitions

Exhibition Type	Japanese title	English title	Location	Year
Solo	Trinity	Trinity	Karuizawa New Art Museum, Nagano	2017
Solo	野鳥の森　1F	1F in the Forest of Wild Birds	Yutaka Kikutake Gallery, Tokyo	2019
Solo	His Last Bow	His Last Bow	Yamamoto Keiko Rochaix, London	2019
Group	The Radiants	The Radiants	Bortolami Gallery, New York	2015
Group	六本木クロッシング2016展：僕の身体（からだ）、あなたの声	Roppongi Crossing 2016: My Body, Your Voice	Mori Art Museum, Tokyo	2016
Group	更級日記考―女性たちの、想像の部屋	Women Imagining Rooms: About the Diary of Lady Sarashina	Ichihara Lakeside Museum, Chiba	2019
Group	話しているのは誰？　現代美術に潜む文学	Image Narratives: Literature in Japanese Contemporary Art	The National Art Center, Tokyo	2019
Group	りんご前線 — Hirosaki Encounters	Hirosaki Encounters	Hirosaki Museum of Contemporary Art, Aomori	2022

Screenplays

Japanese title	English title	Collaborators	Year
女の子たち 紡ぐと織る	Girls, Spinning, and Weaving	Saho Terao, Ichiko Aoba	2022
女の子たち 風船爆弾をつくる	Girls, Making Paper Balloon Bombs	Saho Terao	2023