The Three Crabs

Ōba Minako was born in 1930 and died in 2007. She debuted as a writer in 1968 with Sanbiki no kani (Three Crabs), which won the Akutagawa Prize, a prestigious literary prize awarded to new authors. She went on to write several dozen novels, essays, literary criticism, poetry, and a play. She also translated children’s books from English into Japanese and Japanese classics into modern Japanese. Ōba received numerous literary awards and played an active role in the Japanese literary world, serving as the first member of the Akutagawa Prize selection committee, vice president of the Japan P.E.N. Club, and head of the Women Writers’ Association. She was elected to the Japan Art Academy in 1991. Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda is a literary translator. Born in Tokyo, raised in Texas, her translations include Ryunosuke Akutagawa's KAPPA (New Directions, 2023), Yuko Tsushima's WILDCAT DOME (FSG, 2025), Yoko Tawada's EXOPHONY (New Directions, 2025) and Natsuo Kirino's SWALLOWS (Knopf, 2025) and her work has appeared in LitHub, The Baffler, Monkey, and Chicago Review, among other places. She lives in New York City.

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