Takehiro Irokawa

Takehiro Irokawa (色川 武大, Irokawa Takehiro, March 28, 1929 - April 10, 1989) was a noted Japanese writer who published both serious literature and light fiction under a variety of pseudonyms including Asada Tetsuya (阿佐田哲也) and Budai Irokawa (色川武大).

Irokawa was born in Shinjuku, Tokyo. His father was a retired navy captain who remained at home on a military pension, and with whom Irokawa had troubled relations. Irokawa began skipping school from an early age to see movies and vaudeville in the Asakusa entertainment district. In 1943 he was drafted to work in the factory labor mobilization, and at the end of the war, was expelled from school when it was discovered that he had been editing a mimeographed magazine deemed rebellious. As his father's pension lapsed, he took to small-time criminal activities and gambling, particularly mahjong.

In the early 1950s Irokawa began writing under pseudonyms. He first received literary recognition in 1961 for a short story, winning the Chuokoron Newcomers Prize and praise from Yukio Mishima and Makoto Hiroshi. He continued to publish copiously through the 1970s. Over the years, Irokawa won the 79th Naoki Prize (1978上),[1] the 9th Kawabata Yasunari Literature Prize (1982),[2] and the 40th Yomiuri Prize (1988) for Kyōjin nikki.[3] He was briefly hospitalized in 1968 for visual and auditory hallucinations, perhaps related to narcolepsy; he died of a heart attack.

English translations
  • "Sparrows" (Suzume) in Tokyo stories: a literary stroll, translated by Lawrence Rogers, University of California Press, 2002. ISBN 978-0-520-21788-1.
gollark: No, you can.
gollark: *Investigating evil for YOUR convenience™*
gollark: ***evil***
gollark: I'm halfway through my all-dragon breeding.
gollark: You know, sunrise/set walls are probably really hard to remove, since they can only hatch during designated windows.

References
  1. "直木賞受賞者一覧" [Naoki Prize Winners List] (in Japanese). 日本文学振興会. Retrieved September 13, 2018.
  2. "川端康成文学賞　過去の受賞作品" [Kawabata Yasunari Literature Prize Past Winning Works] (in Japanese). Shinchosha. Retrieved September 13, 2018.
  3. "読売文学賞" [Yomiuri Prize for Literature] (in Japanese). Yomiuri Shimbun. Retrieved September 13, 2018.
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