Akiyuki Nosaka

Akiyuki Nosaka (野坂 昭如) was a Japanese novelist, singer, lyricist, and member of the House of Councillors. As a broadcasting writer he used the name Yukio Aki (阿木 由紀夫) and his alias as a chanson singer was Claude Nosaka (クロード 野坂).

Early life
Nosaka was born in Kamakura, Kanagawa, the son of Sukeyuki Nosaka, who was an official of the Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Construction. Together with his sisters he grew up as an adopted child of a Harimaya family in Nada, Kobe, Hyōgo. His foster mother, Aiko, was his maternal aunt. Nosaka is part of the "Generation of the Ashes", which includes other writers like Kenzaburō Ōe and Makoto Oda.

One of his sisters died as the result of malnutrition, and his adoptive father died during the 1945 bombing of Kobe in World War II. Another sister died of malnutrition in Fukui. Nosaka would later base his short story "Grave of the Fireflies" on these experiences.

Career
Nosaka is well known for children's stories about war. Two of his short stories, "Grave of the Fireflies" and "American Hijiki", won the 58th Naoki Prize in 1967. He is also noted for his preference for sexually explicit material and distinctive writing style, which has been likened to the comic-prose of the seventeenth-century Japanese writer Ihara Saikaku. His novel The Pornographers was translated into English by Michael Gallagher and published in 1968. It was also adapted into a live-action film, The Pornographers, directed by Shōhei Imamura.

In July 1972, as a magazine editor, he published Kafū Nagai's Taishō era (1912-26) erotic short story "Yojōhan fusuma no shitabari". The work was immediately controversial, and in August 1972, he was prosecuted for public obscenity. During the trial, Saiichi Maruya, Sawako Ariyoshi and many other authors testified for the defense. However, in 1980, in an important decision, the Japanese Supreme Court ruled that he was guilty. He was fined 100,000 yen (slightly less than US$300 at the time).

In December 1978, Nosaka was credited for giving former rugby player-turned pro wrestler Susumu Hara his ring name, Ashura Hara.

He was elected to the Japanese Diet in 1983. The 1988 anime film Grave of the Fireflies, directed by Isao Takahata, was based on Nosaka's short story of the same name.

Nosaka suffered a stroke in 2003 and although still affected by it, he kept writing a column for the daily Mainichi Shimbun.

On NHK's December 10, 2015 7:00 pm broadcast announcing Nosaka's death, a veteran journalist was quoted as saying Nosaka was notable for questioning what most people consider common sense, but that Japan has now entered an era in which this is no longer possible.

Selected works

 * TV commercial and magazine articles (1950s)
 * The Pornographers (エロ事師たち) (1963); English translation by Michael Gallagher, ISBN 0-436-31530-0
 * "American Hijiki" (アメリカひじき) (1967); English translation included in The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories (2017), Jay Rubin ed.
 * "Grave of the Fireflies" (火垂るの墓) (1967); English translation by James R. Abrams, published in an issue of the Japan Quarterly (1978)
 * The Whale That Fell in Love With a Submarine (戦争童話集); English translation by Ginny Tapley Takemori (2015), ISBN 978-1-782690-27-6
 * The Cake Tree in the Ruins; English translation by Ginny Tapley Takemori (2018), ISBN 978-1-78227-418-6