In a time of major uncertainty for the Japanese book world, the latest winners of two major book awards have been announced. The Akutagawa Prize for promising newcomers went to Ms. Akiko Akazome, and the Naoki Prize for more established writers of popular fiction to Ms. Kyoko Nakajima.
Ms. Akazome told reporters that, after entering graduate school in Hokkaido, she sought to portray in writing the humor and sensibility of her Kyoto background. Her winning work "Otome no mikkoku" (The Maiden Informer) portrays a young woman coming of age in the stifling closed world of female university students studying the diary of Anne Frank in German. The judges felt she skillfully juxtaposed that circle of petty jealousies and betrayals against the closed world of Anne Frank in hiding and the mystery of who betrayed her family to the Germans.
Much attention has also been paid to the candidacy of a young Iranian writer, Ms. Shirin Nezammafi, for the Akutagawa Prize (for the second time), since she would have been the first winner to come from outside East Asia.