Takako Takahashi, a novelist who explored the inner conflicts and unconscious drives of human beings, and who translated works of French Catholic writers, has died of heart failure, a supporter said. She was 81.
Shortly after graduating in French literature from Kyoto University, she married noted novelist and Chinese literature scholar Kazumi Takahashi.
She helped her writer husband financially by working as a tutor and office worker. She started her career in writing around the time he died in 1971 at age 39. Her works often became candidates for the prestigious Akutagawa Prize.
In 1973, she received the Toshiko Tamura Prize for "Sora no Hate Made" ("To the Ends of the Sky"). "Yuwakusha" ("Seducer"), which deals with an assisted suicide, won the Izumi Kyoka Prize for Literature.