Kunio Tsuji
was a Japanese author, novelist, and scholar of French literature. Tsuji was born in Tokyo, attended Matsumoto High School with Kita Morio, and studied French literature at the University of Tokyo. After graduation, he became an instructor at Gakushūin University and a literary critic. He spent the years 1957-1960 in France, which strongly influenced his development as a novelist. In 1963 he published his first mature work, Kairō nite (In the Corridor), which was awarded the Prize for Modern Literature. Some of his more celebrated later novels include Azuchi ōkanki (1968, translated as The Signore), winner of a Ministry of Education Commendation in the Arts for New Artists; Haikyōsha Yurianusu (The Apostate Julianus, 1972), winner of a Mainichi Award for Art; and Saigyo kaden (西行花伝, The Life of Saigyo) for which he received the 1995 Tanizaki Prize. Tsuji's works were on the whole idealistic and spiritual. They included many historical novels in which the protagonists search for the meaning of life at times of great social change. Tsuji died of cardial infarction at a hospital in Karuizawa, Nagano. English translations The signore : shogun of the warring states (Azuchi ōkanki, 1968), trans. Stephen Snyder, Tokyo ; New York : Kodansha