Fumiko Kometani

Fumiko Kometani (born 1930 in Osaka, Japan) is a Japanese novelist and painter who moved to the United States in 1960, where she transitioned from abstract painting to writing, notably after caring for her developmentally disabled son. She achieved major literary success with her novella Passover (1985), which won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize along with the Bungakkai shinjinshō and Shinchō shinjinshō that year, and later received the Murasaki Shikibu Prize in 1998 for works like Family Business (translated as Wasabi for Breakfast). A longtime US resident and anti-war activist, her home was destroyed in the 2025 Palisades Fire WSJ.