Life and Career
Takahashi was born in Onomichi, Hiroshima prefecture and attended the Economics Department of Yokohama National University without graduating. As a radical student, 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 writers.
Takahashi's first novel, Sayonara, Gyangutachi (Sayonara, Gangsters), was published in 1982, and won the Gunzo Literary Award for First Novels. It has been acclaimed by Critics as one of the most important works of postwar Japanese literature. It has been translated into English by Vertical, Inc., Italian and Brazilian Portuguese.
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 (The Rise and Fall of Japanese Literature) received the Itoh Sei Literature Award.
In 2012, Sayonara Christopher Robin ("Goodbye, Christopher Robin") won the Tanizaki Prize.
He is also a noted essayist, covering a diverse field of topics ranging from literary criticism to horse-racing.
Read more about this topic: Genichiro Takahashi
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or career:
“Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!—
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“The 19-year-old Diana ... decided to make her career that of wife. Today that can be a very, very iffy line of work.... And what sometimes happens to the women who pursue it is the best argument imaginable for teaching girls that they should always be able to take care of themselves.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)