Nao-Cola Yamazaki

Nao-Cola Yamazaki (山崎 ナオコーラ) is the professional name of Naoko Yamazaki (山崎 直子), a Japanese writer. They pride themselves on writing "things no one else can say in words anyone can understand". They have won the Bungei Prize and the Shimase Award for Love Stories. They have been nominated multiple times for the Akutagawa Prize, and their work has been adapted for film. Nao-Cola has chosen not to make their gender public, and has stated that their pronoun is singular "they". They have two children.

Early life and education
Yamazaki was born in 1978 in Kitakyushu, Japan. Shortly after their birth their family moved to Saitama Prefecture, where they were raised. Yamazaki started writing fiction as a senior at Kokugakuin University, from which they graduated after writing a thesis on the character Ukifune in The Tale of Genji. They chose the pen name "Nao-Cola" because they liked Diet Coke.

Career
Yamazaki made their literary debut in 2004 with Don't Laugh At Other People's Sex Lives (人のセックスを笑うな), a story about a romantic relationship between a 19-year-old male student and his much older female teacher. Hito no sekkusu o warau na won the 41st Bungei Prize, an award recognizing new writers. The book was also nominated for the 132nd Akutagawa Prize. Hito no sekkusu o warau na was later adapted into the 2008 Nami Iguchi film of the same name, starring Hiromi Nagasaku and Kenichi Matsuyama.

Several of Yamazaki's subsequent novels were also nominated for the Akutagawa Prize. Katsura Biyōshitsu besshitsu (カツラ美容室別室), Yamazaki's 2007 novel about the relationships among people who meet at a beauty salon, was nominated for the 138th Akutagawa Prize and survived the first round of voting by the selection committee, but ultimately did not win, as the prize went to Mieko Kawakami. Their story Hand (手), later included in a 2009 collection of the same name, was nominated for the 140th Akutagawa Prize. Niki's Humiliation (ニキの屈辱), a romance novel about the relationship between a popular photographer and a photographer's assistant, was nominated for the 145th Akutagawa Prize. In 2016 their novel Utsukushii kyori (美しい距離) was nominated for the 155th Akutagawa Prize, marking their fifth nomination for the award, but the award went to first-time nominee Sayaka Murata. Utsukushii kyori, a story about a married couple dealing with the wife's terminal cancer, subsequently won the 23rd Shimase Award for Love Stories.

In addition to their fiction, Yamazaki also publishes essays on non-traditional family life, including the 2016 collection Cute Husband (かわいい夫), a series of essays about living in a family where the wife is more successful than the husband. After having their first child at the age of 37, Yamazaki wrote a series of essays about the first year of their child's life. The resulting book, Becoming a Parent, Not a Mother (母ではなくて、親になる), was published in 2017.

Yamazaki's first English-language book, a collection of short stories translated by Polly Barton, was published by Strangers Press under the title Friendship for Grown Ups in 2017. In a review for The Japan Society of the UK, Eluned Gramich noted that Yamazaki "seems more interested in the distance between lovers than in what unites them", but also called Friendship for Grown Ups "funny and clever". The Japan Times praised Yamazaki's "skill in evoking the ambiguity of contemporary life" and called the collection "a small book that says a lot about the way we live today".

Recognition

 * 2004: 41st Bungei Prize
 * 2017: 23rd Shimase Award for Love Stories

Selected works in Japanese

 * Don't Laugh At Other People's Sex Lives (人のセックスを笑うな), Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 2004, ISBN 9784309016849
 * Wig's barber (カツラ美容室別室), Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 2007, ISBN 9784309018409
 * Hand (手), Bungeishunjū, 2007, ISBN 9784163278209
 * Niki's Humiliation (ニキの屈辱), Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 2011, ISBN 9784309020631
 * Balcony gardening and the life (ベランダ園芸で考えたこと), Chikuma Shobō, 2014, ISBN 9784480435941
 * Cute Husband (かわいい夫), Natsuhasha, 2015, ISBN 9784904816189
 * Beautiful Distance (美しい距離), Bungeishunjū, 2016, ISBN 9784163904818
 * Becoming a Parent, not a Mother (母ではなくて、親になる), Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 2017, ISBN 9784309025803
 * Sisterhood (偽姉妹), Chūōkōron Shinsha, 2018, ISBN 9784120050909
 * Eat Sleep Hobby (趣味で腹いっぱい), Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 2019, ISBN 9784309027784
 * I blow up Lookism (ブスの自信の持ち方), Seibundō Shinkōsha, 2019, ISBN 9784416519561
 * full-time dad's economy (リボンの男), Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 2019, ISBN 9784309028521

Selected works in English

 * "The Beginning of the Long End", trans. Takami Nieda, Asymptote Journal, 2013
 * "Cavities and Kindness", trans. Kalau Almony, Words Without Borders, 2015
 * "Dad, I Love You", trans. Morgan Giles, The Book of Tokyo: A City in Short Fiction, 2015
 * "A False Genealogy", trans. Polly Barton, Catapult Magazine, 2015
 * Friendship For Grown Ups, trans. Polly Barton, Strangers Press, 2017, ISBN 9781911343028
 * "Fossil Candy", trans. Polly Barton, The Arkansas International, 2017