Akiyuki Nosaka

was a Japanese novelist, journalist, singer, lyricist, and member of the House of Councillors. As a broadcasting writer he used the name and his alias as a chanson singer was . He wrote the short story "Grave of the Fireflies" based on his experiences in the wake of American bombing during the Second World War; the short story has been adapted into both an animated film and a live-action film.

Early life Nosaka was born in Kamakura, Kanagawa, the son of Sukeyuki Nosaka, who was an official of the Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Construction. Nosaka is part of the "Generation of the Ashes" , which includes other writers like Kenzaburō Ōe and Makoto Oda.

Together with his sister he grew up as an adopted child of a Harimaya family in Nada, Kobe, Hyōgo. His foster mother, Aiko, was his maternal aunt. In 1944 they adopted a second young girl named Keiko.

During the June 5, 1945 bombing of Kobe, Nosaka lost both his home and his adoptive father to the firebombs. Aiko was afflicted with severe burns across her body and had to be taken by rickshaw to a nearby hospital, leaving Keiko and Nosaka in the care of a widow in Manchidanicho, a resort area in Nishinomiya. Nosaka became enamored with the widow's daughter, Kyoko, who was two years older than him. When they moved in they brought a large pack of provisions buried at their destroyed home that their adoptive father had stored for emergencies. However, it ran out quickly, and they began having to survive on rice and stolen vegetables and other foodstuffs Nosaka could forage, like snails. Keiko began to suffer from malnutrition, both from being unable to eat hard foods and because Nosaka would often eat her portion of food. In "The Distance of Fifty Steps" he said:"When I think of how my sister wasted away to skin and bones by a process of reverse development that eventually left her too weak to raise her head or even cry, how she died alone, and how there was nothing left of her but ash after she was cremated, I feel that I was too preoccupied with self-preservation. When I found myself in the hell of starvation, I ate her share of food..." Keiko stopped walking and reverted to crawling, too weak to even eat or cry. Writing in 1992, Nosaka stated that after being rescued from the cells by his biological father in 1947 he proceeded to 'forget' all about his traumas following the bombing.

In 1959, he co-wrote the lyrics to the song "The Toys' Cha Cha Cha" (おもちゃのチャチャチャ, Omocha no cha cha cha) with Osamu Yoshioka. The song was later modified to be a children's nursery rhyme, and won the Children's Song Award at the 5th Japan Record Awards. "The Toys' Cha Cha Cha" has gone on to be covered by dozens of artists.

Nosaka has conversely been noted, in his other works, for his preference for sexually explicit material and distinctive writing style, which has been likened to the comic-prose of the seventeenth-century Japanese writer Ihara Saikaku. His debut novel The Pornographers was translated into English by Michael Gallagher and published in 1968. It was also adapted into a live-action film, The Pornographers, directed by Shōhei Imamura.

Writing about the War Nosaka married in 1962, and two years later had a daughter named Mao. As she grew older, she inadvertently became a trigger of suppressed traumas related to Keiko. Nosaka would become "irrationally agitated" whenever Mao wouldn't finish eating all of her food. In "A Playboy's Nursery Songs", Nosaka wrote: "Mao is now about the same age my unfortunate sisters were when they died, and their images overlap. I feel unqualified to be Mao’s father, and I wonder how long I’ll be able to look after her and protect her."

In 1967 he wrote a number of pieces about the war. "A Playboy's Nursery Songs" serves as one of his earliest 'factual accounts' of the June 5th attack and its aftermath. Akiyuki Nosaka won the Naoki Prize for both "American Hijiki" and "Grave of the Fireflies".

Later life In July 1972, as a magazine editor, he published Kafū Nagai's Taishō era (1912–26) erotic short story "Yojōhan fusuma no shitabari". The work was immediately controversial, and in August 1972, he was prosecuted for public obscenity. During the trial, Saiichi Maruya, Sawako Ariyoshi and many other authors testified for the defense. However, in 1980, in an important decision, the Japanese Supreme Court ruled that he was guilty. He was fined 100,000 yen (slightly less than US$300 at the time).

In December 1978, Nosaka was credited for giving former rugby player-turned pro wrestler Susumu Hara his ring name, Ashura Hara.

He was elected to the Japanese Diet in 1983. The 1988 anime film Grave of the Fireflies, directed by Isao Takahata, was based on Nosaka's short story of the same name.

Nosaka suffered a stroke in 2003 and although still affected by it, he kept writing a column for the daily Mainichi Shimbun.

On NHK's December 10, 2015 7:00 pm broadcast announcing Nosaka's death, a veteran journalist was quoted as saying Nosaka was notable for questioning what most people consider common sense, but that Japan has now entered an era in which this is no longer possible.

Selected works (1963); English translation by Michael Gallagher, (1967); English translation included in The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories (2017), Jay Rubin ed. (1967); English translation by James R. Abrams, published in an issue of the Japan Quarterly (1978) English translation by Ginny Tapley Takemori (2015), The Cake Tree in the Ruins; English translation by Ginny Tapley Takemori (2018),