Japanese blogger becomes star writer

By The Associated Press

Published: March 20, 2008

TOKYO — Mieko Kawakami, a former bar hostess and bookstore clerk, was just another obscure singer until she started a blog. Her poetic, street-wise writing stood out so starkly among Internet diaries in Japan that she is now Japan's biggest literary star.

The 31-year-old won this year's Akutagawa Award — named for "Rashomon” author Ryunosuke Akutagawa — which is Japan's most prestigious honor for a new writer.

There are more blog posts in Japanese than any other language, according to Technorati Inc., which tracks nearly 113 million blogs globally. Last year, Technorati found 37 percent of all postings were in Japanese — about 1.5 million per day. Postings in English — from Americans, Britons, Australians and people in many other countries — accounted for 36 percent of the total.

Kawakami is unusual in the extent of her success. But Steve Weber, an American who has written about marketing books online, said Japanese writers are far ahead of Americans in making their work available on the Internet. Many have had books published after producing novels intended to be read on mobile phones, for example.

In the U.S., publishers are just starting to understand the market power that writers with hit blogs can wield, Weber said.

"Popular bloggers are definitely being targeted by smart publishers because the publishers realize that the authors have already done the hard work of book marketing,” he said in an e-mail from Falls Church, Va. "They've attracted the audience.”

U.S. bloggers who have been picked up by major publishers include Julie Powell, author of "Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen,” and Colby Buzzell, a U.S. soldier in Iraq, who wrote "My War: Killing Time in Iraq.”

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