Japanese Novelist Kaoru Furukawa Dies at 92

May 7, 2018

Tokyo- Japanese author Kaoru Furukawa, known for a series of historical samurai novels about the late 19th century, died of angiosarcoma at a hospital in his home city of Shimonoseki in the western Japan prefecture of Yamaguchi on Saturday. He was 92.

While serving as a reporter for The Yamaguchi Shimbun newspaper, Furukawa wrote many novels about samurai, in what is now Yamaguchi Prefecture, who played key roles toward the 1868 Meiji Restoration, such as Shinsaku Takasugi and Shoin Yoshida.

In 1991 after leaving the newspaper, Furukawa won the Naoki Prize for his "Hyohakusha no Aria" (A Vagabond's Aria), a novel that depicts the life of Japanese opera singer Yoshie Fujiwara, after being nominated for the prestigious Japanese prize for popular literature 10 times. Jiji Press