Takahashi Genichiro

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In this Japanese name, the family name is Takahashi.

Genichiro Takahashi (高橋 源一郎, Takahashi Genichiro^?, born 1 January 1951) is a Japanese novelist.

[edit] Biography

Takahashi was born in Onomichi city, Hiroshima prefecture and attended the Economics Department of Yokohama National University without graduating. As a student radical, he was arrested and spent half a year in prison, which left him at a loss linguistically. As part of his rehabilitation, his doctors encouraged him to start writing. Since April 2005, he has been a professor at the International Department of Meiji Gakuin University. Takahashi's current wife, Tanikawa Naoko and former wife Murai Yuzuki were also both authors.

Takahashi's first novel, Sayonara, Gyangutachi ("Sayonara, Gangsters"), was published in 1982, and won the Gunzo Literary Award for First Novels. It has been highly regarded by critics as one of the most important works of postwar Japanese literature. It has been translated into English and Italian.

In addition, his Yuga de kansho-teki na Nippon-yakyuu ("Japanese Baseball: Elegant and Sentimental") won the Mishima Yukio Award in 1988, and his Nihon bungaku seisui shi received the Itoh Sei Literature Award. His other works include Penguin mura ni hi wa ochite ("Sunset in Penguin Village", 1989), Wakusei P-13 no himitsu ("The Secret of Planet 13", 1990), and Gosutobasutazu ("Ghostbusters", 1997). Other novels by Takahashi include "John Lennon vs. The Martians", "A*D*U*L*T", and "The Rise and Fall of Japanese Literature".

He is also a noted essayist, covering a diverse field of topics ranging from literary criticism to horse-racing. Also a literary critic, he is the author of the "Maybe-It's-Not-Literature Syndrome".