Akiko Sugimoto

Akiko Sugimoto (May 28, 1953 December 4, 2015) was a Japanese novelist. She is best known for writing historical fiction about famous people who lived during the Edo period.

Early life and education Sugimoto was born on May 28, 1953, in the city of Yameshi in Fukuoka prefecture. When she was a year old her legs were paralyzed by polio. Her father worked at a university and knew a lot about Japanese literature and history. As a child, Sugimoto read avidly from her father's library, especially his collection of gesaku. She was also fascinated with kabuki. She later earned a master's degree from Kinjo Gakuin University in 1978. Her master's thesis was about Terakado Seiken. In 1990 she wrote , which was about one of the rakugoka who used the artist name . While she mostly wrote about the Edo period, she sometimes also wrote about the Meiji period, such as in her 1995 , which was published in the Asahi Shinbun over the course of a year.

Sugimoto died of breast cancer on December 4, 2015.