Emi Yagi
JapanAbout
Emi Yagi (born 1988) is a Japanese novelist and magazine editor who lives in Tokyo. She has gained international recognition for her unconventional fiction, which combines absurdist humour, surrealism, and social criticism to explore women’s experiences in contemporary Japanese society. Yagi made her literary debut with Diary of a Void (2020), a novel about a woman who pretends to be pregnant to escape the expectations and discrimination she faces in the workplace. The book received the Osamu Dazai Prize, an award recognising promising new fiction, and became an international bestseller after its English translation was published in 2022. Her second novel, When the Museum Is Closed, originally published in Japanese in 2023, further develops her interest in female autonomy, unconventional relationships, and resistance to social norms. Through imaginative premises and understated humour, Yagi questions expectations surrounding women’s bodies, identities, and relationships. Her work has attracted international attention for its fresh perspective on gender and the pressures of everyday life.
