Career
Kotani is one of the founders of the Sense of Gender Award and The Japanese Association of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy. When her complaints were ignored, she sued the author of the entry (Hiroo Yamagata), the publisher and Shufu-no-Tomo-sha, the distributor of the book, for what she termed "textual harassment." The lawsuit was broadly supported by Japanese writers. The Japan Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists association Club established a Women Writer"s Committee, with feminist critic Kazuko Saegusa as chair, and Kotani as sub-chairman
During this period, Kotani and Maki Honda"s translation of Joanna Russian" How to Suppress Women"s Writing received by major feminist critics in Japan including Chizuko Ueno, Fukuko Kobayashi, Yuko Matsumoto, and Kazuko Takemura.
In 2001 the defendants were ordered to pay Kotani 3,300,000 yen (roughly $27,500), and to publish an apology on the top page of their respective website.
