A Japanese novelist, short story writer, and director, born in Nagasaki, on the Japanese island of Kyushu. His novels are known for exploring human nature through themes of disappointment, surrealism, crimes and war, and the use of contraband. He is famous for the novel Almost Transparent Blue, the novel Coin Locker Babies, and the novel From the Fatherland, with Love. He also won the Gonzo New Writers Award and the Akutagawa Prize in 1976, the Mainichi Culture Publishing Prize, and the Mainichi Arts Prize in 2011 for A Singing Whale.