With her distinctive Cartier ring and bracelet, golden Gucci shoes and flowing silk dress slashed down the sides to reveal her long, slim legs, Hitomi Kanehara appears the epitome of bourgeois chic. But then she tucks her long, brown mane behind one ear to reveal six piercings ... and a closer look at her alabaster-hue arms and legs reveals tell-tale signs of self-mutilation.
This contradiction of a polished exterior hiding a tormented and complex interior is at the heart of many of the Japanese literary sensation's works.
Her heroines include a young, beautiful woman with an overwhelming desire to pursue extreme body piercing, tattoos and violent, masochistic sex (Snakes and Earrings); a lonely teenage girl clinging to a friendship with a child molester (Ash Baby); an anorexic girl from a privileged background who has a problem dissociating reality from her computer-world inspired dreams (Amebic); and a jealous, angry young woman continually worried that her husband is cheating (Autofiction).
Kanehara, 25, says many of her characters exhibit traces of herself and her life. She dropped out of school at 11 and was taught at home by her father, a university professor and translator, avidly reading books and writing to express her feelings.
As a teenager, she suffered from anorexia and began to self-mutilate.
She started writing her debut novel Snakes and Earrings (2002) after seeing photographs of extreme body piercings in a magazine, including one memorable image of a forked tongue.
Her raw and graphic writing style made it an instant best-seller in Japan and won her the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, Japan's Man Booker.
