was a Japanese writer. Inagaki was born in

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2. ...

, moved to

Akashi Akashi may refer to: People *Akashi (surname) Places *Akashi, Hyōgo *Akashi Station, a Japanese railroad station on the Sanyō Main Line *Akashi Strait *Akashi Kaikyō Bridge, crossing the former *Akashi Castle *Akashi Domain * Akashi, the name ...

Hyōgo Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kansai region of Honshu. Hyōgo Prefecture has a population of 5,469,762 () and has a geographic area of . Hyōgo Prefecture borders Kyoto Prefecture to the east, Osaka Prefecture to the southeast, an ...

while he was in elementary school, and spent much of his childhood in

Kōbe Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, which ...

. He graduated from Kwansei Gakuin Junior High School. In 1923 he published '' One Thousand and One Second Stories (Issen ichibyō monogatari),'' and by 1926 he was counted among members of the short-lived

Shinkankakuha was a pre-war Japanese literary group led by Riichi Yokomitsu and Yasunari Kawabata which focused on exploring "new impressions" or "new perceptions" in the writing of Japanese literature. Riichi Yokomitsu wrote "The phenomenon of perception for '' ...

group of writers. In 1968 he won the first annual Japan Literature Grand Prize for , an essay on "aesthetic eroticism", where he divides stories into A (anal), V (vaginal), P (penile) and K (clitoral) varieties and "describe the historical, psychological, and metaphysical ramifications of the love of beautiful boys in an eclectic blend of ideas culled from history, Freudianism, pop psychology, and existentialism." Inagaki's works often dealt with themes including flight,

astronomical object An astronomical object, celestial object, stellar object or heavenly body is a naturally occurring physical entity, association, or structure that exists in the observable universe. In astronomy, the terms ''object'' and ''body'' are often us ...

s, and erotic and romantic relationships among beautiful adolescent boys. His stories on the latter topic, and his essays in ''Shōnen'ai no Bigaku'', were an influence on early writers of the yaoi genre such as

Keiko Takemiya is a Japanese manga artist and the former president of Kyoto Seika University. Career Keiko Takemiya (or Takemiya Keiko) is included in the Year 24 Group, a term coined by academics and critics to refer to a group of female authors in the ea ...

References

1900 births 1977 deaths Japanese male short story writers Writers from Hyōgo Prefecture Writers from Osaka 20th-century Japanese novelists 20th-century Japanese short story writers 20th-century Japanese male writers {{Japan-writer-stub