Eiji Yoshikawa
Eiji Yoshikawa was a prominent Japanese historical novelist, renowned for his adaptations of classical literature and historical narratives. Born in Yokohama in 1892, he faced early challenges, including his family's financial struggles that forced him to leave school at a young age. Despite these hardships, Yoshikawa pursued a career in writing, initially gaining recognition for his poetry and later for his novels. His most notable works include "Taiko," an epic narrative set in feudal Japan, and "Shin Heike Monogatari," where he reinterpreted traditional stories for contemporary audiences.
Yoshikawa's revisions of lengthy historical texts made them more accessible, which contributed to their popularity and helped spark a renewed interest in Japanese history. His literary contributions earned him accolades, including the Cultural Order of Merit and the Mainichi Art Award. Throughout his life, he faced personal challenges, including multiple marriages and the impacts of wartime experiences, which influenced his writing style and thematic focus. He passed away in 1962, leaving a legacy that continues to resonate in the world of Japanese literature.
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Eiji Yoshikawa
Author
- Born: August 11, 1892
- Birthplace: Yokohama, Kanagawa prefecture, Japan
- Died: September 7, 1962
- Place of death: Tokyo, Japan
Biography
Eiji Yoshikawa was a Japanese historical novelist best known for his revisions of classical Japanese literature, including his novels Taiko (Taiko: An Epic Novel of War and Glory in Feudal Japan) and Shin Heike monogatari (The Heike Story). In other novels, Yoshikawa reinterpreted the Japanese stories “The Tale of the Genji,” “Outlaws of the Marsh,” and “Romance of the Three Kingdoms.” His revisions told the stories of formerly lengthy works, such as the fifteen- volume Taiko, in a more accessible form. Despite their lack of originality, his works were very popular and inspired interest in Japanese history, and he was consequently awarded the Cultural Order of Merit in 1960. He also received the Mainichi Art Award in 1962, shortly before he died of cancer.
Yoshikawa was born in 1892 in Yokohama. His father’s business failed when he was eleven years old, and he had to leave school to work on the docks. After he was nearly killed in a dockside accident, he became an apprentice to a gold laquer worker in Tokyo, where he joined a group of enthusiasts writing comic haiku. He published these short poems under the pseudonym Kijiro before his first novel, Enoshima monogatari, won first prize in a novel competition hosted in 1914 by the Kodansha publishing house. This recognition and the poetry he continued to write gained him a position in 1921 at Maiyu Shimbun, a Tokyo newspaper for which he wrote serialized novels. He married in 1923 and continued to write, publishing several popular stories under nineteen different pen names in a variety of magazines published by the Kodansha press. In 1937, he covered Japan’s war with China for the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. His time in China resulted in an interest in Chinese literature that influenced his version of “Romance of the Three Kingdoms.”
Yoshikawa divorced and remarried during the war, and after he returned to Japan he took a hiatus from writing between the end of the Chinese war and the end of World War II. A serialized historical novel in the style of his early work, New Tale of the Heike, was published in 1950, but A Private Record of the Pacific War, published in 1958, marks a return to the introspective style that characterized his writing of the early 1930’s, when his first marriage was dissolving.