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:
“O to dream, O to awake and wander
There, and with delight to take and render,
Through the trance of silence,
Quiet breath;
Lo! for there, among the flowers and grasses,
Only the mightier movement sounds and passes;
Only winds and rivers,
Life and death.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
“He was discontented and wasted his life into the bargain; and yet he rated it as a gain in coming to America, that here you could get tea, and coffee, and meat every day. But the only true America is that country where you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of life as may enable you to do without these, and where the state does not endeavor to compel you to sustain slavery and war and other superfluous expenses which directly or indirectly result from the use of such things.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I seemed intent on making it as difficult for myself as possible to pursue my “male” career goal. I not only procrastinated endlessly, submitting my medical school application at the very last minute, but continued to crave a conventional female role even as I moved ahead with my “male” pursuits.”
—Margaret S. Mahler (1897–1985)