was the pen-name of Kanegae Hideyoshi, a Japanese writer of historical fiction in Shōwa and Heisei period Japan. He won the Yoshikawa Eiji Prize for Literature and the

Naoki Prize The Naoki Prize, officially , is a Japanese literary award presented biannually. It was created in 1935 by Kikuchi Kan, then editor of the ''Bungeishunjū'' magazine, and named in memory of novelist Naoki Sanjugo. Sponsored by the Society for t ...

Biography

Saotome's grandfather was a

samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of medieval and early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retainers of the '' daimyo'' (the great feudal landholders). They h ...

of Aizu Domain, and following the defeat of the domain in the Boshin War, immigrated to the United States. However, he later returned to

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of T ...

and from there to Shanghai. Saotomo was born in Harbin,

Manchuria Manchuria is an exonym (derived from the endo demonym " Manchu") for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China (Inner Manchuria) and parts of the Russian Far East (Outer M ...

in Northeast China, and thus was raised in Manchukuo; however, following the defeat of Japan in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, he was evacuated to Kyushu in 1946. He moved to Tokyo in 1948, and attended Keio University's Literature Department, but left school before graduating. In 1954, the noted author, Yamamoto Shugoro, agreed to become his tutor. In 1956, together with other like-minded authors, he formed a literary criticism group called ''Shosetsu Kaigi'' ("Fiction Conference"), with members supporting each other by reviewing each other's work. One of the products of this collaboration was his novel ''Kyojin no Ori'', about the

María Luz Incident Maria may refer to: People * Mary, mother of Jesus * Maria (given name), a popular given name in many languages Place names Extraterrestrial *170 Maria, a Main belt S-type asteroid discovered in 1877 *Lunar maria (plural of ''mare''), large, da ...

, which was awarded the 60th

(1968下). Saotome claimed that his ancestry from led to his interest in historical matters, and the bulk of his work has been historical fiction set in the

Sengoku The was a period in Japanese history of near-constant civil war and social upheaval from 1467 to 1615. The Sengoku period was initiated by the Ōnin War in 1467 which collapsed the feudal system of Japan under the Ashikaga shogunate. Various ...

, Edo or

Bakumatsu was the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate ended. Between 1853 and 1867, Japan ended its isolationist foreign policy known as and changed from a feudal Tokugawa shogunate to the modern empire of the Meiji governm ...

periods. He was awarded the 23rd Yoshikawa Eiji Prize for Literature (1989) for ''Aizu Shikon'' ("The Soul of Aizu Samurai"). Many of his works have been adapted into movies or television series. In 2006, he was elected the chairman of the Japanese

P.E.N. PEN International (known as International PEN until 2010) is a worldwide association of writers, founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere. The association has autonomous Internatio ...

After contracting stomach cancer, Saotome died at a hospital in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan.

References

External links

Mitsugu Saotome
at J'Lit Books from Japan

at JLPP (Japanese Literature Publishing Project) 1926 births 2008 deaths Deaths from stomach cancer Writers from Harbin 20th-century Japanese novelists 21st-century Japanese novelists {{Japan-writer-stub