Taiko: An Epic Novel of War and Glory in Feudal Japan. Taiko ki translated as Taiko: An Epic Novel of War and Glory in Feudal Japan - translated by William Scott Wilson:.Musashi Book V: The Way of Life and Death. Miyamoto Musashi translated as Musashi - translated by Charles S.

His post-war works include New Tale of the Heike, published in the Asahi Weekly (1950), and A Private Record of the Pacific War (1958).įour of his books have been translated into English.

Among the works of this period are Taiko and his re-telling of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.Īt the end of the war he stopped writing and settled down to a quiet retirement in Yoshino (present-day Oumeshi) on the outskirts of Tokyo, but he soon started writing again in 1947. During the war he continued writing novels, and became more influenced by Chinese culture. At this time he divorced Yasu Akazawa and married Fumiko Ikedo. Upon the outbreak of war with China in 1937 the Asahi Shimbun sent him into the field as a special correspondent. But in 1935, with the serialization of Musashi, about famed swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, in the Asahi Shimbun, his writing settled firmly into the genre of historical adventure fiction. In the early 1930s, his writing became introspective, reflecting growing troubles in his personal life. From then on the public's appetite for his brand of adventure writing was insatiable. His name became a household word after Secret Record of Naruto was serialized in the Osaka Mainichi Shimbun. He first used this pen name with the serialization of Sword Trouble, Woman Trouble. He used 19 pen names before settling on Eiji Yoshikawa. In the following years he published stories in various periodicals published by Kodansha, who recognized him as their number one author. His experiences in the earthquake strengthened his resolve to make writing his career. He married Yasu Akazawa in 1923, the year of the Great Kant? earthquake.

He joined the newspaper Maiyu Shimbun in 1921, and in the following year he began publishing serializations, starting with Life of Shinran. In 1914, with The Tale of Enoshima, he won first prize in a novel-writing contest sponsored by the publisher Kodansha. He joined a poetry society and started writing comic haiku under the pseudonym 'Kijiro.' Around this time he became interested in comic haiku.

When he was 18, after a near-fatal accident working at the Yokohama docks, he moved to Tokyo and became an apprentice in a gold lacquer workshop. Because of his father's failed business, he had to drop out of primary school to work when he was 11 years old. He was born in Kanagawa Prefecture, in what is now a part of Yokohama.

Miyamoto musashi yoshikawa eiji