was a Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese writer prominent in the postwar era. He is most readily associated with other writers of his generation, such as Shōtarō Yasuoka

Shōtarō Yasuoka

is a Japanese writer.-Biography:Yasuoka was born in pre-war Japan in Kōchi, Kōchi, but as the son of a veterinary corpsman in the Imperial Army, he spent most of his youth moving from one military post to another. In 1944, he was conscripted and served briefly overseas...

, who describe the effects of Japan's defeat in World War II on the country's psyche.

From an early age, Kojima read a wide variety of literature, both Japanese and Western, and such writers as Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...

, Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...

, and Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays. He is best known for his novels Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov....

 had a strong influence on his work. In addition to his fiction, he had a long career as a professor of English literature at Meiji University in Tokyo, publishing criticism and making translations of many major American writers, including Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....

, Irwin Shaw

Irwin Shaw

Irwin Shaw was a prolific American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author whose written works have sold more than 14 million copies. He is best-known for his novel, The Young Lions about the fate of three soldiers during World War II that was made into a film starring Marlon...

, and Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud

Bernard Malamud was an author of novels and short stories. Along with Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, he was one of the great American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseball novel, The Natural, was adapted into a 1984 film starring Robert Redford...

.

Selected works

Year	Japanese Title	English Title
1948	汽車の中 Kisha no Naka	In a Train
1952	小銃 Shoujuu	The Rifle
1954	アメリカン・スクール Amerikan Sukuuru	The American School
1965	抱擁家族 Houyou Kazoku	An Embracing Family

Awards

• 1954
  1954 in literature
  The year 1954 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Jack Kerouac reads Dwight Goddard's A Buddhist Bible, which will influence him greatly.*John Updike graduates from Harvard with a thesis on George Herbert....
  
   Akutagawa Prize
  Akutagawa Prize
  The is a Japanese literary award presented semi-annually. It was established in 1935 by Kan Kikuchi, then-editor of Bungeishunjū magazine, in memory of author Ryūnosuke Akutagawa...
  
   - American School (Amerikan sukūru 「アメリカン・スクール」)

• 1970
  1970 in literature
  The year 1970 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* Deliverance by American poet James Dickey published...
  
   Tanizaki Prize
  Tanizaki Prize
  The Tanizaki Prize , named in honor of the Japanese novelist Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, is one of Japan's most sought-after literary awards. It was established in 1965 by the publishing company Chūō Kōronsha Inc. to commemorate its 80th anniversary as a publisher...
  
  - Embracing Family (Hōyō kazoku, 「抱擁家族」)

Further reading

"The Rifle" in The Oxford Book of Japanese Short Stories, Theodore W. Gossen, (ed.), Oxford, 1997. ISBN 0-19-283304-9

External links

• http://homepage1.nifty.com/naokiaward/akutagawa/jugun/jugun32KN.htm
• http://www7.ocn.ne.jp/~n-kojima/page/3rd.html