10 Facts About Ayako Miura

Ayako Miura published over eighty works of both fiction and non-fiction.

Miura Ayako was born in the town of Asahikawa, on Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's main islands.

Ayako Miura remained there for the rest of her life, even after becoming a best-selling writer, in spite of pressure to move to Tokyo, the center of Japan's publishing world.

Ayako Miura's family was large and not very well-off financially, but they always managed to be clothed and fed.

Ayako Miura was a voracious reader as a child, borrowing Japanese classics and translated Western classics wherever she could find them.

Ayako Miura became an elementary school teacher when she was seventeen.

Ayako Miura left the teaching profession upon Japan's defeat in World War II, when she became convinced that her own confusion regarding right, wrong, truth and deception disqualified her to teach children anything of value.

Ayako Miura became a confirmed Nihilist until she was converted to the Christian faith.

Ayako Miura was baptised in 1952 and, soon thereafter, married Miura Mitsuyo.

Ayako Miura is often compared and contrasted with the Japanese Catholic novelist Endo Shusaku, who lived around the same time.