The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan (FCCJ) Library is pleased to announce the upcoming Book Break event on February 25, 2021.

Book Break : "Tokyo Ueno Station (JR上野駅公園口)"
By Yu Miri　柳美里 (Winner of Akutagawa Prize and U.S. National Book Award for Translated Literature)
Thursday, February 25, 2021 from 5:00 pm to 7:30 pm
(The talk will be in Japanese with English interpretation)

Admission: Seat 1,100 yen (with a drink)/ Online 550 yen (zoom)
Please sign up by email (front@fccj.or.jp) and pay by Friday, February 19th, 2021.

Venue:
The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan
5F Marunouchi Nijubashi Building
3-2-3 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-0005
(http://www.fccj.or.jp/about/access.html)

Award winning author, Miri Yu, a Japanese-born Korean writer, will speak about her novel "Tokyo Ueno Station," selected for top prize this year by the U.S. National Book Awards for translated literature. The novel depicts the life of the book's narrator Kazu, who left his family in Fukushima Prefecture to work as a laborer in the Japanese capital for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

In a surreal fable, Kazu, who is dead, recalls his world of hard work and intense pain as a construction worker--he spent his final years in a makeshift shelter in Ueno Park. In her dark brooding writing, Yu emphasizes the unfairness of poverty, a theme she is familiar with given her Korean decent and struggle with family poverty in a country that treats the Zainichi as social outcasts. The book was first published in 2014 by Kawade Shobo Shinsha (河出書房新社) in Japanese language and is based on the conversations the author had conducted over a decade with homeless people.

Miri Yu's prolific writing includes plays, prose fiction, and essays she has published over twenty books and was the winner of Japan's most prestigious literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, in 1997 for her book "Kazoku Cinema (家族シネマ = Family Cinena)." Her bestselling memoir "Inochi (命 = Life)" was made into a movie in 2002. After the 2011 Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami in Fukushima, she hosted a radio show to listen to survivors' stories. She relocated to Minami-Soma in Fukushima in 2015 and currently manages a bookstore and theatre space to continue her cultural work with those affected by the disaster.

Due to COVID-19 emergency regulations, our new Book Break schedules have changed. Doors open at 5:00 pm and the presentation starts from 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm. To follow social distancing, audience is restricted to 20 participants and charges are 1,100 yen per sign-up including drink.

We have online sign-ups at 550 yen per person. Notifications will be sent to individual emails after their reservations are confirmed.

FCCJ members can sign up at the reception desk. Reservations cancelled less than 72 hours in advance will be charged in full.

Non-members can reserve at the reception desk by email (front@fccj.or.jp). Payment is in advance till Friday, February 19th, 2021. No refund is available unless the event is cancelled by FCCJ.

We kindly ask for your cooperation with Covid-19 prevention measures at the reception and to wear a mask in the premises. Thank you.