is an American writer and retired literary critic, best known for reviewing books for The New York Times from 1983 to 2017. In that role, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1998.
Early life and family
Kakutani, a Japanese American, was born on January 9, 1955, in New Haven, Connecticut. She is the only child of Yale mathematician Shizuo Kakutani and Keiko "Kay" Uchida. Her father was born in Japan, and her mother was a second-generation Japanese-American raised in Berkeley, California. Kakutani's aunt, Yoshiko Uchida, was an author of children's books.
Career
Kakutani initially worked as a reporter for The Washington Post, and then from 1977 to 1979 for Time magazine. In 1979, she joined The New York Times as a reporter.
Multiple authors who had received such reviews gave harsh public responses. In 2006, Kakutani called Jonathan Franzen's The Discomfort Zone "an odious self-portrait of the artist as a young jackass"; Franzen subsequently called Kakutani "the stupidest person in New York City". In 2012, Kakutani wrote a negative review of Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Antifragile.<!--This is both primafacie an interpretation, but is also the same, in being stated as an antecedent to the enxt sentence.--> In 2018, writing about reviewers that include Kakutani—whether about the Antifragile review, or otherwise—six years after Antifragile, Taleb stated:
Daniel Takeshi, an academic computer scientist, responded to Taleb: "If you can get used to Taleb’s idiosyncratic and pompous writing style, such as mocking... Thomas L. Friedman... and insulting Michiko Kakutani... there's actually some nice insights". According to Kira Cochrane in The Guardian, such counterattacks may have bolstered Kakutani's reputation as commendably "fearless". Austin Powers, Holden Caulfield, Elle Woods of Legally Blonde, and Truman Capote's character Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Kakutani announced that she was stepping down as chief book critic of the Times on July 27, 2017. In an article summarizing her book reviewing career, a writer in Vanity Fair called her "the most powerful book critic in the English-speaking world" and credited her with boosting the careers of George Saunders, Mary Karr, David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, Ian McEwan, Martin Amis, and Zadie Smith. In it, Kakutani draws parallels between postmodern philosophy and the number of false or misleading statements made by Trump. In an interview for the book, she argued:
Kakutani's second book, Ex-Libris: 100+ Books to Read and Re-Read, an essay collection about books that she considers personally and culturally influential, was published in 2020. The artist designed the cover and illustrated thirty of the titles in the style of vintage-inspired bookplates.
In 2024, Kakutani published her third book, The Great Wave: The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider.
Personal life
Kakutani is a fan of the New York Yankees. , she lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
During her career at The New York Times, Kakutani developed a reputation as an extremely private person who was seldom seen in public, with articles describing her as "mysterious" and "reclusive". Shawn McCreesh, writing in New York magazine, said that "you were likelier to have seen a snow leopard in Manhattan than to meet Kakutani in the wild".
- Comedian and Saturday Night Live cast member Bowen Yang performed an impression of Kakutani during his audition for the show, later joking that she was perfect for an impression since many do not know what she looks or sounds like.