On July 26, Komatsu Sakyo, a pioneer in Japanese science fiction, died at the age of 80. Born in Osaka in 1931, he witnessed firsthand the devastation of World War II. After graduating from Kyoto University with a degree in Italian literature (he wrote a thesis on Pirandello), he worked as a reporter and writer of comic manzai skits before entering a writing contest sponsored by SF Magazine in 1959.
One of the "Big Three," along with Hoshi Shin'ichi and Tsutsui Yasutaka, of the first generation of science-fiction writers in Japan, Komatsu is best known for his 1973 novel "Japan Sinks," in which the eruption of Mount Fuji is the first of a series of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunami that lay waste to Japan.
By chance, the announcement in the book by an American geodesic group of a massive shift in the earth's crust centered on the Japanese archipelago takes place on March 11, with Mount Fuji erupting the next day.