Hiroshi Sakagami


Hiroshi Sakagami is a noted Japanese author. As of 2009, he is also president of the Japan Writers' Association and director of Keio University Press.

Biography

Early life

Sakagami was born in Tokyo. After moving several times during his school years, he entered Keio University where he studied formal logic. In 1960 he took a job with Riken Optical Industry, which he left in 1995 to become an advisor to the Keio University Press.

Career

Sakagami's first novel, published at age 19, was nominated for the 1955 Akutagawa Prize. His subsequent novels have often focused on social groups driven by strong ideologies, including Asa no mura which describes the collapse of a community based on a theory of chicken breeding as the ideal organisation of society, Keita no sentaku in which the protagonist joins a religious sect in the mountains, and Nemuran ka na which describes how a generation devoted to Zen philosophy became entrepreneurs in the Japanese post-war economic miracle.

Awards

Sakagami has received a number of awards for his writings, including the 1991 Yomiuri Prize for Yasashii teihakuchi, the 1992 Noma Literary Prize for Denen fukei, the Chūōkōron Prize for Aru aki no dekigoto, the New Writer's Prize of the Ministry of Culture, and the Kawabata Prize. In 2008 he became a member of the Japan Art Academy.