About Mizuki Tsujimura
Mizuki Tsujimura (her pen name) has come to be known as one of Japan’s most sympathetic writers on issues facing teenagers, and has described writing mysteries that appeal to teens as one of her life’s aims.
It was mystery, fantasy and horror stories in particular and juvenile literature in general that powered her awakening, at a very young age, to her talents as a writer; her identity as an author began to take shape all the way back in elementary school, where her first literary efforts were horror stories.
Counting Sherlock Holmes tales as well as Edogawa Rampo’s Shonen Tanteidan (Boys’ Detective Club) novella among her favorite reading matter at the time, she was still in elementary school when Tsujimura struck up a correspondence with mystery writer Yukito Ayatsuji after being bowled over by his Decagon House Murders (which is inspired by Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.)
In fact, in a lasting tribute, she ended up taking the last character of Ayatsuji’s family name — tsuji — to include in her own pen name. She was also a big fan of Natsuhiko Kyogoku, a writer specializing in stories about youkai supernatural creatures of legend, whose autograph she got as a 17-year-old from the writer at a bookshop.
Other influences beyond books include manga, anime and games, including the works of manga duo Fujiko Fujio. Perhaps not surprisingly, Tsujimura has both written about anime (in her previous novel, Anime Supremacy) and had some of her novels appear in manga versions.
Her career as a published writer took off with a splash in her early 20s with A School Frozen in Time, which was picked up by Kodansha, Japan’s top publishing company — she was determined to publish under the Kodansha imprint, apparently, so that she would be under the same label as the Decagon House Murders, which had made such an impact on her as a child. To add fanfare to her success, she also snagged the Mephisto Award from the Kodansha Mephisto Literary Magazine for debut mystery novels.
The book was a long time in the writing — Tsujimura started it in high school — and in a later interview, she described herself as having been closer to the viewpoint of a teenager than an adult when she wrote it, still viewing adults somewhat antagonistically. It tells the story of eight schoolkids trapped inside their school building (with the clocks stopped) who must confront the suicide of a former classmate.
Some 17 years on, during which her oeuvre has reached over 20 novels, Lonely Castle in the Mirror has come to be seen by some as her definitive return to “answer” some of her preoccupations in that first work.
Lonely Castle in the Mirror is her first and only one to be translated into English so far — as a novel anyway. In fact, manga versions of A School Frozen in Time and Anime Supremacy have already appeared in English.
Tsunagu (the title is a verb literally meaning to “connect” or “link together”), which explores the idea of communicating with deceased loved ones, has been made into a film with the English title Until the Break of Dawn, and can be seen with English subtitles, while Anime Supremacy is currently in the process of being filmed.
Further English translations of her novels seem likely — Tsujimura’s ability to tell a warmly human story, often using a magical, fantasy or supernatural element, is likely to win her many more fans abroad, both teen and adult.
Check out Mizuki Tsujimura on Wikipedia
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