Tsutomu Minakami


Tsutomu Mizukami, also known as Minakami Tsutomu, was a popular and prolific Japanese author of novels, detective stories, biographies, and plays. He won the Tanizaki Prize and the Naoki Prize, and many of his stories were made into movies.

Biography

Mizukami was born in Wakasa, Fukui Prefecture, to a poor family. Between the ages of 9 and 12, he was a novice in a Zen temple in Kyoto. Disillusioned by the conduct of the temple's chief priest, however, he left the temple in 1936.
Mizukami entered Ritsumeikan University to study Japanese literature, but dropped out for financial reasons and because of bad health. After World War II he learned from author Kōji Uno, and in 1952 wrote the autobiographical Furaipan no uta, which became a best-seller. For nearly the next decade, however, he did not publish, but in 1960, his story centering on Minamata disease, Umi no kiba, started his career as a writer of detective stories on social themes.
His autobiographic Gan no tera won the Naoki Prize in 1961, and was adapted for film by Kawashima Yūzō. He followed this in 1962 with Kiga kaikyô which was made into a film under the same name by Tomu Uchida, and Kiri to kage, then novels dealing with women's concerns, including Gobanchô Yûgiri-rô and Echizen takeningyô.
He won the 1975 Tanizaki Prize for Ikkyū, a biography of an eccentric Zen-master Ikkyū.

Recognition