Trained as a doctor in Manchuria, he declined to follow his father into the
Trained as a doctor in Manchuria, he declined to follow his father into the profession, starting a Marxist-surrealist literary group shortly after graduation and winning the Akutagawa prize three years later for his short story The Crime of S. Karuma. His early work was Kafkaesque science fiction, but he soon split his time between novels and the theater, writing and directing plays like Friends and The Suitcase. Existentialist issues in his novels include the mask that enables its wearer to function socially in The Face of Another; the titular "guide to life" in The Ruined Map; and the titular way of life in The Box Man. His interest in entomology led to the extended metaphors comparing human characters to dung-eating beetles in The Ark Sakura, and to social insects in the novel that he adopted for Hiroshi Teshigahara's 1964 film that received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. FTP name this Japanese writer who died in 1993, the author of Woman in the Dunes.
Trained as a doctor in Manchuria, he declined to follow his father into the profession, starting a Marxist-surrealist literary group shortly after graduation and winning the Akutagawa prize three years later for his short story The Crime of S. Karuma.