Takehiro Irokawa

Who is Takehiro Irokawa?

Takehiro Irokawa was a noted Japanese writer who published both serious literature and light fiction under a variety of pseudonyms including Asada Tetsuya and Budai Irokawa.

Irokawa was born in Shinjuku, Tokyo. His father was a retired navy captain who remained at home on a military pension, and with whom Irokawa had troubled relations. Irokawa began skipping school from an early age to see movies and vaudeville in the Asakusa entertainment district. In 1943 he was drafted to work in the factory labor mobilization, and at the end of the war, was expelled from school when it was discovered that he had been editing a mimeographed magazine deemed rebellious. As his father's pension lapsed, he took to small-time criminal activities and gambling, particularly mahjong.

In the early 1950s Irokawa began writing under pseudonyms. He first received literary recognition in 1961 for a short story, winning the Chuokoron Newcomers Prize and praise from Yukio Mishima and Makoto Hiroshi. He continued to publish copiously through the 1970s. Over the years, Irokawa won the 1978 Naoki Prize, 1982 Kawabata Prize, and 1988 Yomiuri Prize for Kyōjin nikki. He was briefly hospitalized in 1968 for visual and auditory hallucinations, perhaps related to narcolepsy; he died of a heart attack.