Obituary / Kyojin Onishi / Novelist

The Yomiuri Shimbun

Kyojin Onishi

Jiji PressNovelist Kyojin Onishi died of pneumonia at his home in Saitama early Wednesday. He was 97.

Consistent in his rebellious stance against authority throughout his career, Onishi wrote mainly about war, politics and discrimination. He is famous for his novel “Shinsei Kigeki” (A divine comedy), which he spent 25 years writing from 1955.

The book is about the resistance of a nihilistic Imperial Japanese Army recruit against brutal military organizations, and reflects Onishi’s experience in the now-defunct army.

Onishi was born in Fukuoka with the given name Norito. He dropped out of Kyushu University and found a job at a newspaper publisher before being drafted.

He joined a heavy artillery regiment at a fort on Tsushima island between Kyushu Island and the Korean Peninsula.

After the end of World War II in 1945, Onishi launched a magazine. He also worked with other literary figures, such as novelist Yutaka Haniya and poet Shigeharu Nakano.

Onishi debuted as a novelist in 1948 with “Seishin no Hyoten” (The freezing point of the mind). Onishi provoked a controversy in the literary world by criticizing a major work by novelist Hiroshi Noma about a man’s struggles in the Imperial Japanese Army.

http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0001117448