Li Kotomi (æÂÂç´峰, born on 26 December 1989), is the pen name of a Taiwanese fiction writer, translator, and essayist in Mandarin and Japanese. Her native language is Mandarin Chinese, but her novels are predominantly written in Japanese. Her literary career began in 2017 with the Japanese novel titled Hitorimai (Chinese: ç¨è English: Solo Dance), which received the 60th Gunzo Prize for New Writers that year. Her novel Higanbana ga saku shima (An Island Where Red Spider Lilies Bloom) received the 165th Akutagawa Prize, which was established in 1935 in commemoration of Ryà «nosuke Akutagawa.
Li Kotomi was born on 26 December 1989, in Taiwan. She studied Japanese when she was 15 years old. She thinks the more she knows Japanese, the more interesting it is. Her elementary school teacher was dissatisfied with her because Japan had colonized Taiwan.
She also tried to create novels in Chinese concurrently with learning Japanese. She enrolled at National Taiwan University and graduated from the Department of Chinese Literature and Japanese Literature. In 2013, she came to Japan to study for a master's degree in the Department of Japanese Language and Literature at Waseda University.
Following graduation, she moved to Japan to study for a master's degree in the Department of Japanese Language and Literature at Waseda University in 2013. She has been living there since, receiving her permanent residency in 2018. Following graduation, she started working for a general corporation. While commuting to work on the train, she came up with the idea for her debut novel, Hitorimai (Chinese: ç¨è English: Solo Dance), which was awarded the Gunzo Prize for New Writers in 2017.
She left her company in 2018 and has become a freelance writer and translator, working mostly from Japanese to Chinese. She has translated her Japanese novels into Chinese herself and published them in Taiwan. In addition to writing novels, she has translated novels, essays, contracts, tourist information, comics, smartphone games, and newspaper articles.
In 2019, her novel Itsutsu kazoereba mikazuki ga (Count to Five and See the Crescent Moon) was nominated for the 161th Akutagawa Ryunosuke Prize and the 41st Noma Literary Prize.Her 2021 novel Higanbana ga saku shima (Chinese: 彼岸è±çÂÂéÂÂä¹Â島 English: An Island Where Red Spider Lilies Bloom) was nominated for the Mishima Yukio Prize and received the 165th Akutagawa Prize.
Porarisu ga furisosogu yoru (The Night of the Shining North Star, published in February 2020) received the Art Encouragement Newcomer Award. This series of short stories is set in Shinjuku Ni-chome and depicts the comings and goings of various people âÂÂpeople with diverse sexual identities, foreigners living in Japan, and others âÂÂintertwined with themes of national identity, history, and culture. She won the 2021 Akutagawa Prize for Higanbana ga saku shima (The Island Where Red Spider Lilies Bloom) This novel is set on an island where traditional family structures are dismantled, and women known as "noro" govern the society with a language exclusive to women. Toumei na maku o hedatenagara, published in Aug 2022, is a collection of essays she had written for over four years, from her debut years, 2017 to 2022, when she received the Akutagawa Prize.
Since her debut, she has consistently written her works in close contact with modern society, including life and death, sexual diversity (LGBT, sexual minorities, etc.), nationality, language, and history and politics that are based on it. Also, Li Kotomi recently spoke at the International Conference on Open Access to Culture (held from 28 June â 7 July 2022) during Plenary Session 2, "A Dialogue in Diversity: Inclusion of Differences, Prospects in Cultural Collaboration".
In November 2024, Li publicly came out as a transgender women after being outed on social media. She said that she "fled to Japan in 2013 after she experienced bullying and discrimination because she was transgender" and that she "could not live with peace of mind in Taiwan". She is also a lesbian.