Reading the brief biography of Izumi Suzuki on publisher Verso Books’ website, it’s hard to believe she isn’t more famous. In the 1970s, she was a model and an actress in mainstream cinema and pinku eiga (erotic films), and after the death of her husband, jazz musician Kaoru Abe, she became a prolific writer of darkly playful and subversive fiction. And yet, her creative output was cut short in 1986, when she took her own life at the age of 36.
Terminal Boredom: Stories, by Izumi SuzukiTranslated by Polly Barton, Sam Bett, David Boyd, Daniel Joseph, Aiko Masubuchi and Helen O’Horan224 pagesVERSO BOOKS
Although she left behind a wealth of work that embodied Japan’s counterculture, and she and Abe were the subjects of Koji Wakamatsu's 1995 biopic “Endless Waltz,” Suzuki has little name recognition among modern readers.
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