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, life and/or career:
“Actors ought to be larger than life. You come across quite enough ordinary, nondescript people in daily life and I don’t see why you should be subjected to them on the stage too.”
—Donald Sinden (b. 1923)
“Most of a modest woman’s life was spent, after all, in denying what, in one day at least of every year, was made obvious.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.”
—Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964)