Hisako Matsubara

Hisako Matsubara was born and grew up in Kyoto, the daughter of a Shinto priest. She studied comparative religion and literature at the International Christian University in Tokyo and did graduate work in theater arts at Pennsylvania State University. She earned her doctoral degree at the University of Göttingen, Germany (1966-1970) in Comparative History. Living in Cologne, Matsubara taught herself to write in German, and within five years she had her own weekly column in Die Zeit. Her many...See more

Hisako Matsubara was born and grew up in Kyoto, the daughter of a Shinto priest. She studied comparative religion and literature at the International Christian University in Tokyo and did graduate work in theater arts at Pennsylvania State University. She earned her doctoral degree at the University of Göttingen, Germany (1966-1970) in Comparative History. Living in Cologne, Matsubara taught herself to write in German, and within five years she had her own weekly column in Die Zeit. Her many novels were written in German, Japanese, and English and have been translated into eight languages. See less