Books & Literature

Yoko Tawada Becomes 1st Japanese to Receive Nelly Sachs Prize, Prestigious German Award for Person of Literature

The Yomiuri Shimbun
Yoko Tawada gives a speech at the Nelly Sachs Prize award ceremony in Dortmund, Germany, on Sunday.

By Ayaka Kudo / Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent

14:35 JST, December 16, 2025

DORTMUND, Germany — Berlin-based writer Yoko Tawada was awarded the Nelly Sachs Prize, a biennial prize in Germany for a person of letters who has contributed to the mutual understanding of different cultures, at a ceremony in Dortmund in western Germany on Sunday.

Tawada, 65, the first Japanese person to win the prize, received €15,000 (about ¥2.7 million) in prize money at a ceremony held at the city hall.

Tawada writes professionally in both Japanese and German. The city of Dortmund praised her highly for being full of playfulness, trying out various methods and experimental endeavors and exploring the spaces between different cultures and languages.

At the ceremony, Tawada called the prize “a precious gift.”

“I’d like to continue using threads of light to connect cultures and time, words and languages, and humans and other creatures,” she said.

The prize was launched in 1961 to honor Nelly Sachs, a Berlin-born Jewish poet and a Nobel Prize laureate.