The winners of the Naoki literary prize for the second half of 2000 have been announced. This time, both winners -- "Planaria" by Yamamoto Fumio and "Vitamin F" by Shigematsu Kiyoshi -- are short-story collections, as were three of the other four short-listed works.
Yamamoto, 38, like Kirino Natsuo and Iwai Shimako, emerged from the world of young adult novels for girls, shojo shosetsu. In interviews in All Yomimono (March issue) and Shukan Bunshun (Feb. 15 issue), she recalls how one day, while riding from her family home in Yokohama to her job as an OL in Nihonbashi, she suddenly snapped. She had been trying to escape into a Murakami Haruki novel on the crowded train but couldn't, and had to get off the train halfway to work. She burst into tears on the platform and vowed, then and there, that one day she would have a life where she could peacefully read all day in bed or on the sofa.
She ended up entering a competition for Cobalt Novels and writing four of them a year. After several years she moved on to adult fiction, winning the Yoshikawa Eiji prize for new novelists for "Ren'ai Chudoku (Loveholic)" in 1999.