Shizuko Gō(郷静子, April 20, 1929–September 30, 2014) was a Japanese novelist. She was best known for her 1972 novelRequiem, which won theAkutagawa Prize.
Gō was bornMichiko Yamaguchi inYokohama, Japan on April 20, 1929. She graduated from Tsurumi Kōtō Joshi Gakkō.[1] DuringWorld War II she worked in a factory instead of going to college, like many other people her age at the time. After the war she contractedtuberculosis, and was sent to a temple in the countryside to heal by her family. After two years. Gō had recovered enough to find a job and return to her normal life. She began writing in 1949. However, her tuberculosis recurred regularly until she eventually had to have a lung removed in 1955. She married Ikuzō Ōshima soon after the surgery, and stopped writing to raise her family.[2]
Gō began writing again in 1968, after theJapanese Self Defense Force announced its new budget. She wrote her best-known novel,Requiem(れくいえむ), after the announcement. It is a semi-autobiographical work that takes place during World War II, and follows a young woman who works in a factory and contracts tuberculosis. The story was originally published inBungakukai in 1972, and won the Akutagawa Prize.[2] She wrote several other novels after that success that also hadanti-war themes. She even went to thePhilippines in 1984 to conduct research for her 1986 storyMidoriiro no Yami (緑色の闇), which was about a Japanese family inManila during World War II.[2]
Gō became more politically active in the anti-war andpeace movements, especially in 1982 when she wrote a piece in theAsahi Shinbun against the United States and Japan's military exercises nearMount Fuji.[2] She also wrote about Japan's inconsistent and corrupt education system in some of her fiction and nonfiction works.[2]
Gō died of old age in Yokohama on September 30, 2014.[1]
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