Mitsuyo Kakuta made her debut while still a student at Waseda University's Faculty of Literature,[1] with Kōfuku na yūgi (A Blissful Pastime).
[2] The Eighth Day, translated into English in 2010, received the 2007 Chūō Kōron Literary Prize and has been made into a television drama series and a film.
Both her 2012 books – her novel Kami no tsuki and her short-story volume Kanata no ko (The Children Beyond) – were prizewinners.
[6] She stated in an interview in October 2015 that she is translating the 11th-century classic The Tale of Genji into modern Japanese and this was likely to take her three years.
[7] In the same interview she mentioned Shuichi Yoshida, Yōko Ogawa and Kaori Ekuni as contemporary Japanese writers whom she could recommend.