Factbook

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Literary Awards

Two Japanese authors have won the Nobel Prize in Literature

[UPDATED: 10-10-2017]

Two Japanese authors have won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Yasunari Kawabata in 1968 “for his narrative mastery, which with great sensibility expresses the essence of the Japanese mind” and Kenzaburo Oe in 1994 “who with poetic force creates an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today.”

When it announced the award the Nobel committee cited three of Kawabata’s novels Snow Country, Thousand Cranes and The Old Capital; while Oe is known for titles associated with his disabled son such as A Healing Family and Father, Where are you going?

In 2017, Kazuo Ishiguro, probably best known as author of The Remains of the Day a novel about a British aristocrat’s butler, won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Ishiguro, born in Nagasaki in 1954, moved to the United Kingdom from Japan when he was five and lives in Golders Green, North London. He is a British citizen and writes in English.

Two Japanese authors have won the Nobel Prize in Literature Posted March 22nd, 2017 by Richard Nathan

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Factbook

Two Japanese authors have won the Nobel Prize in Literature

Writing about ‘The Lost’ or ‘Old and New’ or Japan ‘Off-The-Beaten-Track’ in English is an enduring publishing trend that goes back to at least 1878[UPDATED: 6-17-2024]

‘The Life of an Amorous Man’ written by a 17th-century Japanese poet spawned the genre now known as ‘Floating World’ publishing[UPDATED: 1-16-2024]

A poem about a frog written in 1686 by Japan’s most famous poet is Japan’s best known poem[UPDATED: 10-2-2023]

In the 1960s a member of the Japanese Imperial Family started moonlighting as a science fiction author[UPDATED: 8-22-2023]

Writing about the plight of women in Japan is not a new trend. In the 1870s visitors to Japan were already pontificating on the topic in print[UPDATED: 8-4-2023]

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