The Modern Novel

Biography

Yoshio Aramaki was born in 1933 in Otaru, Hokkaido, where his father managed a quarrying company. He studied psychology at Waseda University, Tokyo. He then worked for a publisher for a while, before returning home in 1961, following the protests resulting from the renewal of the Japan-USA security treaty. He renounced his ambitions to be a professional writer as well as renouncing his political ideals. He planned to take over the family business and studied architecture at Hokkai Gakuen University. While he started to run one of his father’s construction companies, he retained an interest in art and opened an art gallery.

At this time, he became interested in science fiction and wrote for the magazine of a local club on various US and Japanese science fiction writers. He became involved in the debate on speculative fiction in Japanese science fiction and soon started writing his own speculative fiction. He wrote many stories and novels. 神聖代 (The Sacred Era) is considered his masterwork. In the 1990s he moved away from speculative fiction into virtual reality war novels but remains one of Japan’s foremost science fiction writers.Till the publication of 神聖代 (The Sacred Era) he was best-known in English for his story Soft Clocks.

Other links

Yoshio Aramaki
Stories by Aramaki translated into English
Interview
Interview