Tomuyuki Hoshino

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Born in Los Angeles in 1965, Tomoyuki Hoshino returned to Japan with his family before his third birthday and spent the next twenty-three years living in the greater Tokyo-Yokohama area.  After graduating with a degree in literature from Waseda University in 1988, he worked for two years as a journalist for the conservative Sankei newspaper.  He left that job and Japan to study abroad in Mexico from 1991-92.  After briefly returning to Japan, he received a Mexican government scholarship and resumed his studies in Mexico, where he stayed until August of 1995.  From 1996-2000, he tried his hand at writing subtitles for Latin American and Spanish films.

His debut novel The Last Gasp was published in 1997 and awarded the Bungei Prize. His second novel The Mermaid Sings Wake Up was published in 2000 and awarded the Mishima Prize. In 2003, he was awarded the Noma Bungei award for Fantasista, a collection of three novellas. His other book-length works include Naburiai (1999), The Poisoned Singles Hot Springs (2002), Lonely Hearts Killer (2004), Alkaloid Lovers (2005), A Worussian-Japanese Tragedy (2005), The Tale of Rainbow and Chloe (2006), We, Kittens (2006), The Examination Room for Plants (2007), Dokushin (2007), Mugendô (2007), and Suizoku (2009).

From 2004-2007, he taught creative writing at Waseda University.  He continues to write short stories, novels, and novellas, as well as essays and guest commentaries for newspapers and journals on topics ranging from sports to politics.  In 2006, the literary journal Bungei dedicated a special issue to Hoshino's writing that includes interviews, commentaries by other writers and critics, and the short story “No Fathers Club.”

In addition to his time in Mexico, Hoshino has traveled widely throughout Latin America, as well as Spain, Taiwan, Korea, the U.S., England, and India.  He has participated in Writers' Caravans with authors from India and Taiwan, and he continues to forge ties with his literary counterparts elsewhere in Asia in particular.  His fiction has won him the admiration of notable figures such as the celebrated Korean poet Ji-woo Hwang, who urged Hoshino to continue writing literature with "great depth of feeling."
Hoshino is also an avid soccer fan and amateur player whose commentaries on the game (including the politics of the 2002 FIFA World Cup co-hosted by Korea and Japan) have attracted a following independent of his fiction.

He maintains a blog (in Japanese) at http://hoshinot.exblog.jp/ and the website Hoshino Tomoyuki Archives at http://www.hoshinot.jp/.
 

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“I don’t want to go so far as to say such-and-such was the deciding factor.  Only that it’s too late now.  From this point onward, we have no choice but to rebuild our relationships anew.  For that to happen ... I’ve written it so many times that I’m not rehashing it yet again.”

What happens when a popular and young emperor suddenly dies and the only person available to succeed him is his sister?  How can people in an island country survive as climate change and martial law are eroding more and more opportunities for local sustainability and mutual aid?  Where can people turn when the wildly distorted stories told on the nightly news are about them?  And what can be done to challenge the rise of a new authoritarian political leadership at a time when the general public is obsessed with fears related to personal and national “security”?  These and other provocative questions provide the backdrop for this powerhouse novel about young adults embroiled in what appear to be more private matters – friendships, sex, a love suicide, and struggles to cope with grief and work.  Lonely Hearts Killer compels readers to examine the relationship between state violence and interpersonal brutality while pointing toward ways out of the escalating terror.  PM Press is proud to bring you this first English translation of a full-length novel by the award-winning Japanese author Tomoyuki Hoshino.

For excerpts from the author/translator Q&A, click here.

The Buzz

“Since his debut, Hoshino has used as the core of his writing a unique sense of the unreality of things, allowing him to illuminate otherwise hidden realities within Japanese society. And as he continues to write from this tricky position, it goes without saying that he produces work upon work of extraordinary beauty and power.”
--Yûko Tsushima, award-winning novelist

“Reading Hoshino’s novels is like traveling to a strange land all by yourself.  You touch down on an airfield in a foreign country, get your passport stamped, and leave the airport all nerves and anticipation.  The area around an airport is more or less the same in any country.  It is sterile and without character.  There, you have no real sense of having come somewhere new.  But then you take a deep breath and a smell you’ve never encountered enters your nose, a wind you’ve never felt brushes against your skin, and an unknown substance rains down upon your head.”
--Mitsuyo Kakuta, award-winning novelist

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