Japan’s Pulitzers for Fiction
The Japan Times is reporting that Akiko Itoyama, 39, has been named the recipient of the new Akutagawa Prize for promising new writers, while Keigo Higashino, 47, has been awarded the Naoki Prize for established writers for fiction.
The Akutagawa Prize was awarded for Itoyama’s short story Okide Matsu (Waiting off the Coast). It depicts the delicate friendship between a man and a woman, work colleagues who promise to destroy the data on the other person’s computer if that person dies first, according to a press release.
Higashino won his prize for Yogisha X-no Kenshin (The Devotion of Suspect X), about a genius mathematics teacher who comes up with a plan to cover up a crime committed by a woman he is in love with.
By the way, both prizes — named after novelists Ryunosuke Akutagawa and Sanjugo Naoki — were founded in 1935. The current awards mark the 134th time the two bi-annual prizes have been handed out, and like the Pulitzer prizes for fiction in the USA or the Man Booker prize in Britain, the literati will be out in force at the awards ceremony held in downtown Tokyo, with liquor flowing and sushi even for the partycrashers.
Itoyama gets 1 million yen for her prize, plus a commemorative clock. What does Hgashino get? The same?
Someone once told me she crashed the party that is held in downtown Tokyo for this literary event, and if anyone wants to know how to get in, I will post her instructions here. I plan to be there, too.
The awards ceremony will be held at the Tokyo Kaikan in Tokyo’s
January 19th, 2006 at 1:08 pmChiyoda-ku on Feb. 17. There will ne lots of booze flowing and food circulating. It’s easy to get in, all you need is a name card, a nice outfit that does make you look too far out of it (in other words, dress for success, literary style) and the determination to get in and mix with the literati. You might even get invited to a party afterwards, too.
The Akutagawa Prize is actually awarded “to the best short story of a purely literary nature published in a newspaper or magazine by a new or rising author.”
The Naoki Prize is awarded to “the best work of popular literature in any format by a new, rising, or (reasonably young) established author.”
The distinction between them is “pure literary fiction” vs. “popular fiction,” not new vs. established author.
See http://www.f.waseda.jp/mjewel/jlit/awards/awards.html
January 19th, 2006 at 1:24 pmFor further reference:
The Akutagawa Prize is for 純文学(jun-bungaku). See http://d.hatena.ne.jp/keyword/%B3%A9%C0%EE%BE%DE
for a good explanation in Japanese.
The Naoki Prize is for 大衆文学(taishuu-bungaku). See
http://homepage1.nifty.com/naokiaward/kenkyu/kenkyu_whats.htm
for a good explanation in Japanese.
I know that the Naoki Prize can be awarded to a “(reasonably young) established writer,” but that just means that the Naoki Prize includes a wider scope of authors.
It is sad that the Japan Times didn’t check this out before printing a misleading statement in their article.
January 19th, 2006 at 2:23 pmWhoever writes the “fiction” of the reasons behind Japan’s involvement in WWII at the Yasakuni Shrine site should get this award. Talk about a whale of a tale!
January 19th, 2006 at 4:34 pmParty crashers? I’d kind of stick out, but that sounds like a capital idea!
January 21st, 2006 at 9:22 amAndrew, nobody sticks out at these parties or after-parties. These are the bohemians outkasts of Japan society. One guy attends reguarly in a pink dinner shut, with purple hair. And he is a literary superstar.
January 21st, 2006 at 12:13 pm