15 Facts About Mitsuo Nakamura

Mitsuo Nakamura was the pen-name of a writer of biographies and stage-plays, and a literary critic active in Showa period Japan.

Nakamura Mitsuo was born in Tokyo, in the plebeian district of Shitaya,.

Mitsuo Nakamura studied the French language while at the First Higher School, and in April 1931, he entered the Tokyo Imperial University's Law School.

Mitsuo Nakamura dropped out after two months, but returned the following year as a student in the Department of French Literature, where his thesis was on the works of Guy de Maupassant.

In 1950, Mitsuo Nakamura published Fuzoku Shosetsu Ron, in which he analyzed modern Japanese realism as expressed by Fumio Niwa and made a scathing attack against the I-Novel format which he criticized as being little more than thinly disguised autobiographies, lacking in any meaningful social commentary and removed from modern urban life and realities.

Mitsuo Nakamura won the Yomiuri Literary Prize for a second time in 1958.

In 1962, Mitsuo Nakamura became director of the Museum of Modern Literature in Tokyo, and taught at Kyoto University from 1963.

Mitsuo Nakamura continued to write stage plays, including Pari Hanjoki and Kiteki Issei, and novels, including Waga Sei no Hakusho, Nise no Guzo, and Aru Ai.

Mitsuo Nakamura won the Noma Literary Prize in 1965 and Yomiuri Literary Prize for a third time in 1967, as well as the Japan Art Academy Prize the same year.

Mitsuo Nakamura became a member of the Japan Art Academy in 1970.

Mitsuo Nakamura announced his retirement in 1981, and was designated a Person of Cultural Merit by the Japanese government in 1982.

Mitsuo Nakamura began living in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture from the spring of 1933.

Mitsuo Nakamura was widowed at age 43, and his second wife, Kumiko Koba was a playwright.

Mitsuo Nakamura became a Roman Catholic shortly before his death in 1988 at the age of 77.

Mitsuo Nakamura's grave is at the Arai Cemetery in Sugamo, Tokyo.