was the

pen-name A pen name, also called a ''nom de plume'' or a literary double, is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name. A pen na ...

of a novelist in

Shōwa period Shōwa may refer to: * Hirohito (1901–1989), the 124th Emperor of Japan, known posthumously as Emperor Shōwa * Showa Corporation, a Japanese suspension and shock manufacturer, affiliated with the Honda keiretsu Japanese eras * Jōwa (Heian ...

Japan, known primarily for his

biographical works A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or ...

and works on literary history. His real name was Fujio Hirai. Noguchi was born in

Kōjimachi is a district in Chiyoda, Tokyo. History Prior to the arrival of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the area was known as . The area developed as townspeople settled along the Kōshū Kaidō. In 1878, the Kōjimachi area became , a ward of the city of Tokyo. I ...

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

, and studied at

Keio University , mottoeng = The pen is mightier than the sword , type = Private research coeducational higher education institution , established = 1858 , founder = Yukichi Fukuzawa , endowmen ...

. His first published work was a novel about the pathos in the lives of common people, ''Kaze no keifu'' ("Genealogy of the Wind", 1940). In the post-

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 opposin ...

period, he turned to works

biography A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or ...

and

literary history The history of literature is the historical development of writings in prose or poetry that attempt to provide entertainment, enlightenment, or instruction to the reader/listener/observer, as well as the development of the literary techniques ...

, with ''Tokuda Shusei den'' ("Biography of Tokuda Shusei", 1965) about the noted author. This was followed by ''Kurai yoru no watashi'' ("Myself on a Dark Night", 1969), describing the literary world in Japan during the 1920s and 1930s. His biography of

Nagai Kafu Nagai may refer to: *Nagai (surname), a Japanese surname *Nagai, Yamagata, a city in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan *An alternative name for Nagapattinam district, Tamil Nadu, India * Nagai (''Star Wars''), a fictional alien race in the ''Star Wars'' f ...

''Waga Kafu'' ("My Kafu", 1969), was awarded the

Yomiuri Prize The is a literary award in Japan. The prize was founded in 1949 by the Yomiuri Shinbun Company to help form a "strong cultural nation". The winner is awarded two million Japanese yen and an inkstone. Award categories For the first two years, a ...

. In 1981 he was awarded the

Japan Art Academy is the highest-ranking official artistic organization in Japan. It is established as an extraordinary organ of the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs (文化庁, Bunkacho) in the thirty-first article of the law establishing the Ministry of Ed ...

Prize, and in 1986, he published ''Kanshokuteki Shōwa bundan shi'' ("An Impressionistic History of Shōwa Literature").

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Noguchi, Fujio 1911 births 1993 deaths Japanese writers Japanese non-fiction writers People from Tokyo Yomiuri Prize winners 20th-century non-fiction writers 20th-century pseudonymous writers Presidents of the Japan Writers’ Association

See also

References