16 Facts About Yukiko Motoya

Yukiko Motoya is a Japanese novelist, playwright, theatre director, and former voice actress.

Yukiko Motoya has won numerous Japanese literary and dramatic awards, including the Akutagawa Prize, the Noma Literary New Face Prize, the Mishima Yukio Prize, the Kenzaburo Oe Prize, the Kishida Kunio Drama Award, and the Tsuruya Nanboku Drama Award.

Yukiko Motoya's work has been adapted multiple times for film.

Yukiko Motoya founded her own theater company, called Gekidan Motoyo Yukiko, in 2000, and began writing and staging her own plays.

Yukiko Motoya appears in the ending sequences of FLCL during credits, in which she's listed as model.

In 2002, prompted by a magazine editor's invitation, Yukiko Motoya made her fiction debut with the short story Eriko to zettai.

Yukiko Motoya was nominated a third time for her 2011 novel Nurui doku, about a woman who has a relationship with a pathological liar claiming to be a former high school classmate.

Yukiko Motoya subsequently won the 7th Kenzaburo Oe Prize for her 2012 collection Arashi no pikunikku, and the 27th Mishima Yukio Prize for her 2013 novel Jibun wo suki ni naru houhou.

In 2016, on her fourth nomination, Yukiko Motoya won the 154th Akutagawa Prize for her story Irui konin tan, in which a wife discovers that she and her husband look more and more alike as they grow older together.

At the prize ceremony the press commented on her mismatched socks, leading Yukiko Motoya to admit that she had not expected to win, and had rushed to the prize ceremony without any special preparation.

In 2018 a collection of Yukiko Motoya's stories, translated into English by Asa Yoneda, was published under the title The Lonesome Bodybuilder in the United States.

Nilanjana Roy, in her review for the Financial Times, concluded that "Yukiko Motoya's shivery, murmuring voice will never completely leave you".

Yukiko Motoya continued writing and directing plays for her theatre company while writing short stories and novels, and in 2006 she became the youngest person ever to win the Tsuruya Nanboku Memorial Award for Best Play, which she received for her play Sonan.

Nobuko Tanaka of The Japan Times has called Yukiko Motoya "the darling of Japanese media" for her frequent contributions to Japanese magazines, television, and radio.

From 2005 to 2006 Yukiko Motoya was the Friday host for Nippon Broadcasting System's late night radio show All Night Nippon.

In 2013 Yukiko Motoya married the poet, lyricist and film director Kite Okachimachi.