was a noted Japanese novelist and short story writer.

Uno was born in Osaka

Osaka

is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...

 to parents of Samurai

Samurai

is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...

 origin. His grandfather was a police captain and his father a teacher. After his father's death when Uno was four, his family lost all their savings speculating in the stock market. When Uno was eight, he was sent to live with his grandmother and an uncle in Sōemonchō as his mother became a waitress. There he lived, beside the Dōtonbori

Dotonbori

is one of the principal tourist destinations in Osaka, Japan. It is a single street, running alongside the Dōtonbori canal between the Dōtonboribashi Bridge and the Nipponbashi Bridge in the Namba ward of Osaka...

 entertainment district, among geisha, prostitutes, wig-makers, and gamblers, as he attended Rikugun elementary school from 1899-1901. He attended Tennōji middle school, where he learned to read English and acquired a taste for 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...

's fiction. In 1910 he moved to Tokyo to study English literature at Waseda University

Waseda University

, abbreviated as , is one of the most prestigious private universities in Japan and Asia. Its main campuses are located in the northern part of Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as Tokyo Senmon Gakko, the institution was renamed "Waseda University" in 1902. It is known for its liberal climate...

, where he read Symbolist poetry and Russian modernists including Leonid Andreyev

Leonid Andreyev

Leonid Nikolaievich Andreyev was a Russian playwright, novelist and short-story writer. He is one of the most talented and prolific representatives of the Silver Age period in Russian history...

, Mikhail Artsybashev

Mikhail Artsybashev

Mikhail Petrovich Artsybashev ; was a Russian writer and playwright, and a major proponent of the literary style known as naturalism...

, Konstantin Balmont

Konstantin Balmont

Konstantin Dmitriyevich Balmont was a Russian symbolist poet, translator, one of the major figures of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry.-Biography:Konstantin Balmont was born in v...

, Aleksandr Kuprin

Aleksandr Kuprin

Aleksandr Ivanovich Kuprin , was a Russian writer, pilot, explorer and adventurer who is perhaps best known for his story The Duel . Other well-known works include Moloch , Olesya , Junior Captain Rybnikov , Emerald , and The Garnet Bracelet...

, Fyodor Sologub

Fyodor Sologub

Fyodor Sologub was a Russian Symbolist poet, novelist, playwright and essayist. He was the first writer to introduce the morbid, pessimistic elements characteristic of European fin de siècle literature and philosophy into Russian prose.-Early life:...

, and Boris Konstantinovich Zaytsev

Boris Konstantinovich Zaytsev

-References:...

.

At age 28, Uno published his first major work, "In the Storehouse", whose colloquial and ironic style was criticized as "flippant" and "popular". After seven years of mental illness and silence, 1927-1933, his publications became more conventional and Uno participated in the literary life of the day. During World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 he wrote essays on literary life in the Taishō period

Taisho period

The , or Taishō era, is a period in the history of Japan dating from July 30, 1912 to December 25, 1926, coinciding with the reign of the Taishō Emperor. The health of the new emperor was weak, which prompted the shift in political power from the old oligarchic group of elder statesmen to the Diet...

 (1912-1926).

He received the Yomiuri Prize

Yomiuri Prize

The is a prestigious literary award in Japan. The prize was founded in 1948 by the Yomiuri Shinbun Company to help form a "cultural nation". The winner is awarded one million Japanese yen and an inkstone.-Award categories:...

 in 1950 for his 1948 novel Omigawa (思ひ川, River of Thought), and highly praised for his 1951 critical biography of author Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Ryunosuke Akutagawa

was a Japanese writer active in the Taishō period in Japan. He is regarded as the "Father of the Japanese short story". He committed suicide at age of 35 through an overdose of barbital.-Early life:...

. In 1953 he campaigned for the release of 20 Communist factory workers accused of sabotaging a Japan National Railways freight train, publishing two novels on their behalf, and touring China in 1956 on a personal invitation from Zhou Enlai

Zhou Enlai

Zhou Enlai was the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, serving from October 1949 until his death in January 1976...

. Uno died of pulmonary tuberculosis.