TAKEDA TAIJUN

(1912–1976)

Takeda Taijun was a Tokyo-born novelist and member of the First Generation of postwar writers. He attended Tokyo University, but abandoned his degree as he became involved in leftist activity, for which he was arrested and imprisoned. In 1937, he was conscripted and sent to the front in central China, but was released two years later. However, he stayed in China through the rest of the war and wrote Shibasen (Shiba Sen, 1943), a novel about the Chinese historian Sima Qian. In 1947, he began working at Hokkaido University but quit a year later to give full attention to writing. His most well-known novel, Hikarigoke (1954; tr. Luminous Moss, 1967), is based on an incident of cannibalism (known as the Hikarigoke Incident) on a naval vessel during World War II in northern Hokkaido. In 1971, Takeda was hospitalized with complications from diabetes and was thereafter forced to dictate novels to his wife. He published the novel Memai no sanpo (Vertigo Walk, 1976) and won the Noma Prize, but died shortly thereafter.