Jun Ishikawa (author)

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Jun Ishikawa (石川淳 Ishikawa Jun, March 7, 1899 - December 29, 1987) was a Japanese modernist author. Ishikawa was born in Tokyo and graduated from the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages (東京外国語学校, later Tokyo University of Foreign Studies). In 1936 he won the fourth annual Akutagawa Prize for The Bodhisattva (普賢 Fugen). In early 1938, when Japan's war against China was at its height, Ishikawa published the brilliantly ironic "Song of Mars," an antiwar story soon banned for fomenting antimilitary thought [1]. He also wrote many essays as well as translating L'Immoraliste by Nobel Prize-winning author André Gide.

Along with the likes of Osamu Dazai, Sakaguchi Ango, and Oda Sakunosuke, Ishikawa was known as a member of the Buraiha (literally "Ruffian") tradition of anticonventional literature.

For further reading: Ishikawa, Jun, “The Legend of Gold and Other Stories.” Trans. William J. Tyler. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1998.