LITERARY AWARDS

Japanese literary awards (bungaku sho) honor exceptional authors and their works in various categories. Some, including the Bungakkai Newcomer Award, target fledgling writers, and among these awards the Edogawa Rampo Prize offers an annuity along with publishing contracts. Other prizes target up-and-coming authors and, along with prize monies, are meant to help the winner’s career. Three prizes—the Akutagawa Ryunosuke Prize, the Mishima Yukio Prize, and the Noma Prize—are known as the “triple crown” of newcomer prizes, but to date only one author, Shono Yoriko, has been awarded all three. Newspaper publishing companies also award prizes, including the Yomiuri Prize for Literature, the Mainichi Publishing Cultural Prize, and the Osaragi Jiro Prize given by the Asahi newspaper.Some of the newspaper prizes are given exclusively for novels, and others have more open criteria; other literary prizes are open to any author. Some focus on genres other than the novel, such as the Tanizaki Jun’ichiro Prize, which can include dramas, the Kobayashi Hideo Prize for criticism and essays, the Oya Prize for nonfiction, and the HShi (Mr. H) Prize, named after sponsor Hirasawa Teijiro (1904–91), for anthologies of modern poetry.

See also DAZAI OSAMU PRIZE; ITO SEI PRIZE FOR LITERATURE; KAWABATA YASUNARI PRIZE FOR LITERATURE; KIKUCHI KAN PRIZE; LITERARY CRITICISM; NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE; ODA SAKUNOSUKE PRIZE; ORDER OF CULTURAL MERIT; WOMEN’S LITERATURE PRIZE; YOSHIKAWA EIJI PRIZE FOR LITERATURE.