The Modern Novel

Biography

Tatsuhiko Shibusawa was was the pen name of Shibusawa Tatsuo. He was born in 1928 in Tokyo. His father was a banker, and his mother was the daughter of an industrialist and politician. He planned to be an aeronautical engineer but that plan had to be abandoned when Japan was defeated in World War II and it was not helped by his inability to master German, a language deemed essential for engineers.

As a result he turned to French, which he studied at university. He took an interest in the post-World War I French avant-garde. His plan to be come a university professor had to be abandoned when he contracted tuberculosis and he became a freelance writer. He moved to a resort area and started translating French literature into Japanese, He translated the Marquis de Sade’s Juliette for which he and his publisher were prosecuted for obscenity. Despite support from other authors he was eventually fined 70,000 yen (less than $2000). He continued to translate de Sade and write works on eroticism. He became friends with Mishima and started writing original works of fantasy. He died of a rupture of a carotid aneurysm in 1987.

Other links

Tatsuhiko Shibusawa
Tatsuhiko Shibusawa
An introduction to Shibusawa Tatsuhiko and his world of the imagination