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Kikuchi Kan Prize
The honors achievement in all aspects of Japanese literary culture. It was named in honor of Kikuchi Kan. The prize is presented annually by the literary magazine ''Bungei Shunjū'' and the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Literature. History The original Kikuchi Kan Prize was proposed by Kikuchi as an award to honor the elders of the literary world. It was established in 1938. In keeping with the intent of the prize, the jury was made up of novelists aged 45 or younger, and recipients were novelists aged 46 or older. The prize lapsed after six years, but was revived in 1952 following Kikuchi's death. The range of recipients was enlarged to honor achievements in cinema, broadcasting, and other fields in contemporary literary culture. The jury meets in October to consider works published from September 1 of the previous year through August 31, and awards are announced in the December issue of ''Bungei Shunjū''. Select list of prizewinners The list of prizewinners includes a r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kikuchi Kan
, also known as Kan Kikuchi (which uses the same kanji as his real name), was a Japanese author. He established the publishing company Bungeishunjū, the monthly magazine of the same name, the Japan Writer's Association and both the Akutagawa and Naoki Prize for popular literature. He came to prominence for the plays "Madame Pearl" and "Father Returns", but his ample support for the Imperial Japanese war effort led to his marginalization in the postwar period. He was also the head of Daiei Motion Picture Company (currently Kadokawa Pictures). He is known to have been an avid player of Mahjong. Early life and career Kikuchi was born on December 26, 1888, in Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture, Japan. In 1904-1905 after the Russo-Japanese War, literature in Japan grew more modern. French Realism was one of the first influences that immersed into Japan's literature. Building from the famous and classic works from the West, which include diaries and autobiographies, Japanese writers form ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Matsumoto Seicho
Matsumoto (松本 or 松元, "base of the pine tree") may refer to: Places * Matsumoto, Nagano (松本市), a city ** Matsumoto Airport, an airport southwest of Matsumoto, Nagano * Matsumoto, Kagoshima (松元町), a former town now part of the city of Kagoshima * Matsumoto Domain, a feudal domain in Shinano Province, modern-day Nagano Prefecture * Matsumoto Pond, a pond in Victoria Land, Antarctica Other uses * Matsumoto (surname), a surname and list of people with the name * Matsumoto Castle, a castle in Matsumoto, Nagano * Matsumoto Baseball Stadium, a baseball stadium in Matsumoto, Nagano * Matsumoto Bus Terminal, a bus terminal in Matsumoto, Nagano * Matsumoto Station, a railway station in Matsumoto, Nagano * Matsumoto University, a university in Matsumoto, Nagano * The Peninsula Hong Kong or Matsumoto Hotel See also * Matsumoto sarin attack The Matsumoto sarin attack was an attempted assassination perpetrated by members of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult in Matsumot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mitsumasa Anno
was a Japanese illustrator and writer of children's books, known best for picture books with few or no words. He received the international Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1984 for his "lasting contribution to children's literature." Life Anno was born in 1926 in Tsuwano, a small town in Shimane Prefecture, Japan and grew up there. As a student at a regional high school, he studied art, drawing, and the writings of Hermann Hesse. During World War II, Anno was drafted into the Japanese army. After the war, Anno earned a degree from the Yamaguchi Teacher Training College (a predecessor of Yamaguchi University) in 1948. He taught mathematics for ten years in an elementary school in Tokyo before beginning a career illustrating children's books. Anno lived in Japan with his wife, Midori. They had two children, Masaichiro and Seiko. He died on 24 December 2020 from cirrhosis of the liver. Art Anno was best known for wordless picture books featuring small, detailed figures. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hisashi Inoue
was a leading Japanese playwright and writer of comic fiction. From 1961 to 1986, he used the pen name of Uchiyama Hisashi. Early life Inoue was born in what is now part of Kawanishi in Yamagata Prefecture, where his father was a pharmacist. His father was involved in an agrarian reform movement and also managed a local drama troupe. A novel his father had written won a prize and he was offered a job as a scriptwriter in a film company. But when he was preparing to move to Tokyo, he became ill with spinal caries and, soon after, when Hisashi Inoue was 5 years old, he died at age 34. His father's sudden death influenced Hisashi to be a writer. After suffering from child abuse at the hands of his stepfather, he was subsequently sent off to a Lasallian orphanage in Sendai, where he received a Christian baptism. He graduated from Sophia University’s Facility of Letters, continuing on to graduate school in French literature, with a two-year hiatus in between to raise more ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edwin McClellan
Edwin McClellan (24 October 1925 – 27 April 2009) was a British Japanologist, teacher, writer, translator, and interpreter of Japanese literature and culture. Biography McClellan was born in Kobe, Japan in 1925 to a Japanese mother, Teruko Yokobori, and a British father who worked for Lever Brothers in Japan. His mother and older brother died when he was two. Bilingual from birth and educated at the Canadian Academy in Kobe, McClellan and his father were repatriated to Britain in 1942 aboard the Tatsuta Maru, a passenger liner requisitioned by the Imperial Japanese Navy to repatriate British nationals from throughout Southeast Asia. In London, McClellan taught Japanese at the School of Oriental and African Studies as part of the war effort. At 18, he joined the Royal Air Force, hoping to become a fighter pilot, but his fluency in Japanese made him more useful to Allied intelligence. He spent the years 1944–1947 in Washington, D.C. and at Langley Air Force Base in Maryland, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Seidensticker
Edward George Seidensticker (February 11, 1921 – August 26, 2007) was an American noted post-World War II scholar, historian, and preeminent translator of classical and contemporary Japanese literature. His English translation of the epic '' The Tale of Genji,'' published in 1976, was especially well received critically and is counted among the preferred modern translations. Seidensticker is closely associated with the work of three major Japanese writers of the 20th century: Yasunari Kawabata, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, and Yukio Mishima. His landmark translations of novels by Kawabata, in particular ''Snow Country'' (1956) and ''Thousand Cranes'' (1958), led, in part, to Kawabata being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968. Biography Early years Seidensticker was born in 1921 on an isolated farmstead near Castle Rock, Colorado. His father, also named Edward G. Seidensticker, was the owner of a modest ranch that struggled financially during the 1920s and early 1930s. His ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kodansha
is a Japanese privately-held publishing company headquartered in Bunkyō, Tokyo. Kodansha is the largest Japanese publishing company, and it produces the manga magazines ''Nakayoshi'', ''Afternoon'', ''Evening'', ''Weekly Shōnen Magazine'' and ''Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine'', as well as the more literary magazines ''Gunzō'', ''Shūkan Gendai'', and the Japanese dictionary ''Nihongo Daijiten''. Kodansha was founded by Seiji Noma in 1910, and members of his family continue as its owners either directly or through the Noma Cultural Foundation. History Seiji Noma founded Kodansha in 1910 as a spin-off of the ''Dai-Nippon Yūbenkai'' (, "Greater Japan Oratorical Society") and produced the literary magazine ''Yūben'' () as its first publication. The name ''Kodansha'' (taken from ''Kōdan Club'' (), a now-defunct magazine published by the company) originated in 1911 when the publisher formally merged with the ''Dai-Nippon Yūbenkai''. The company has used its current legal name since ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Masanori Hata
(born April 17, 1935) is a Japanese zoologist, essayist, and filmmaker. A popular essayist under the pen name Mutsugorō, he was awarded the Kikuchi Kan Prize for his writing in 1977. He is perhaps best known in the West as the director and screenwriter of the 1986 film ''The Adventures of Milo and Otis''. Hata was born in Fukuoka Prefecture and graduated from the Faculty of Biology at Tokyo University in 1958, and went on to complete a master's degree in 1959. Trained as a zoologist, he worked as a documentary filmmaker producing nature films. He moved to the eastern coast of Hokkaidō to establish the Mutsugorō Animal Kingdom nature preserve, where he and his family live with over 300 wild and domestic animals. He is the author of over 100 books, including collections of his Mutsugorō essays on nature such as ''Warera dōbutsu mina kyōdai'' (All of Us Animals Are Brothers and Sisters, 1967) and ''Mutsogorō no hakubutsushi'' (Mutsugoro's Natural History, 1975). Over four ye ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Akira Yoshimura
was an award-winning Japanese writer. Internationally he is best known for his novels ''Shipwrecks'' and ''On Parole''. Life and work Yoshimura was the president of the Japanese writers' union and a PEN member. He published over 20 novels, of which ''On Parole'' and ''Shipwrecks'' are internationally known and have been translated into several languages. In 1984 he received the Yomiuri Prize for his novel ''Hagoku'' (, ''On Parole'') based on the true story of Yoshie Shiratori. After the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, Yoshimura's nonfiction chronicle of three previous tsunamis on the coast of Sanriku, ''Sanriku Kaigan Otsunami'' received an influx of orders, requiring a reprint of 150,000 copies. Yoshimura's wife and author in her own right, Setsuko Tsumura donated the royalties from the book to the village of Tanohata, which was heavily impacted by the tsunami. Tanohata was a favorite place of Yoshimura's to visit and inspired him to begin research on the historical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hideo Kobayashi
was a Japanese author, who established literary criticism as an independent art form in Japan. Early life Kobayashi was born in the Kanda district of Tokyo, where his father was a noted engineer who introduced European diamond polishing technology to Japan, and who invented a ruby-based phonograph needle. Kobayashi studied French literature at Tokyo Imperial University, where his classmates included Hidemi Kon and Tatsuji Miyoshi. He met Chūya Nakahara in April 1925, with whom he quickly became close friends, but in November of the same year, began living together with Nakahara's former mistress, the actress Yasuko Hasegawa. Kobayashi graduated in March 1928, and soon after moved to Osaka for a few months before moving to Nara, where he stayed at the home of Naoya Shiga from May 1928. His relationship with Yasuko Hasegawa ended around this time. In September 1929, he submitted an article to a contest hed by the literary journal ''Kaizō,'' and won second place. Literary crit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yoji Yamada
is a Japanese film director best known for his ''Otoko wa Tsurai yo'' series of films and his Samurai Trilogy (''The Twilight Samurai'', ''The Hidden Blade'' and '' Love and Honor''). Biography He was born in Osaka, but due to his father's job as an engineer for the South Manchuria Railway, he was brought up in Dalian, China. from the age of two. Following the end of World War II, he returned to Japan and subsequently lived in Yamagata Prefecture. After receiving his degree from Tokyo University in 1954, he entered Shochiku and worked under Yoshitaro Nomura as a scriptwriter or as an assistant director. He won many awards throughout his lengthy career and is well respected in Japan and by critics throughout the world. He wrote his first screenplay in 1958, and directed his first movie in 1961. Yamada continues to make movies to this day. He once served as president of the Directors Guild of Japan, and is currently a guest professor of Ritsumeikan University. Tora-san series ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nagai Tatsuo
was a writer of short stories, novels, and essays, active in the Shōwa period Japan, known for his portrayals of city life. Nagai was also known as a haiku poet under the pen-name of "Tomonkyo". Early life Nagai was born in the Sarugakuchō neighborhood of Tokyo in impoverished circumstances. He was forced to quit school after graduation from elementary school due to his father's illness and premature death. However, he had already begun to exhibit signs of literary talent, and his first novel ''Kappan-ya no Hanashi'' ("Tale of a Printer's Shop") was published when he was 16. This novel won a prize in a competition and was highly praised by the well-known author and editor, Kikuchi Kan. Literary career Due to this encouragement, Nagai devoted his energies to writing, submitting a stage play to the Imperial Garden Theater in 1923, and publishing ''Kuroi Gohan'' ("Black Rice") in ''Bungeishunjū,'' a monthly literary journal founded by Kikuchi Kan. In 1924, together with the famo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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