A biographical study of Rai Sanyo, the late-Edo historian and poet, tracing his family life, illness, friendships, Chinese-style poetry and prose, and the influence his historical imagination exerted toward the end of the shogunate. Shinichiro Nakamura links the inner life of the figure with the intellectual landscape of his age.

A substantial biography that reads the currents of late-Edo intellect and poetry through the life of Rai Sanyo.

Kobo Abe’s play is set on an island left behind by the mainland and revolves around the death of an outsider. Within an allegorical frame, it explores communal pressure, ambiguous responsibility, love, exclusion, and violence.

On a closed island, communal silence and responsibility emerge with unsettling force.

An art-historical essay that reads Renaissance art, especially around Florence, through thought, literature, religion, and allegory. It reveals the anxiety, magical imagination, and mental climate behind brilliant visual forms.

It looks beyond Renaissance brightness to the shadows and spiritual tensions behind it.

Set in postwar Tokyo, this novel begins with an encounter with a blind girl and entwines desire, death, and hallucination. Mitsuharu Kaneko’s dense poetic prose exposes human sadness, tenderness, and cruelty at once.

An unusual novel by poet Mitsuharu Kaneko, where a journey of love turns into a descent through hell.

Masahiro Shinoda’s historical film adapts Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence. It depicts faith, apostasy, and political pressure under the persecution of Christians, approaching the theme of divine silence through tense, atmospheric images.

A film that watches human beings waver between preserving faith and surviving.

The award recognized Kiyoshi Atsumi’s achievement in the Tora-san film series. Through ordinary humor, travel, heartbreak, and family feeling, his performance made Tora-san one of Japanese cinema’s enduring characters.

Through Tora-san’s humor and melancholy, Atsumi inscribed ordinary feeling into film.

The work refers to the performance activity of the string quartet centered on Mari Iwamoto. As a pioneering permanent string quartet in Japan, it introduced chamber repertory through refined ensemble playing and shaped postwar concert culture.

The activity of the Mari Iwamoto String Quartet helped open the way for chamber music performance in Japan.

A group of dance works by Shigeoka Hanayagi. While retaining the bodily sensibility of classical Japanese dance, they incorporate contemporary sound and voice, delicately composing distance, resonance, and afterimage on stage.

A stage where the body of classical dance meets a modern sense of sound.

Yoshikazu Shirakawa’s photographic book presents the Himalayas in large-format images. Through severe natural forms, the textures of snow and rock, and shifting light, it renders the mountains as landscapes of almost religious grandeur.

A photographic book that captures Himalayan snow, rock, and light as a landscape of grandeur.

The work refers to Hisao Kanze’s stage achievement around the Noh piece Omu Komachi. Through chant, pauses, and bodily tension, he sharpened the story of Ono no Komachi in old age into a performance that could reach modern audiences.

The words and body of the aged Komachi emerge through Noh’s silence and tension.

A South Pacific voyage documentary by Junichi Ushiyama. It follows sea travel, island life, ritual, and exchange around the Kula system, approaching long-distance navigation from an anthropological perspective.

A voyage through the waters of Kula exchange, showing the cultures and lives that connect the islands.

A broadcast historical drama set amid the transition from the late shogunate to the Meiji Restoration. Isamu Onoda’s script uses the period-drama form to present character, courage, and decision-making in an accessible popular style.

A broadcast period drama that portrays figures of the Restoration era in a direct, popular narrative style.

A long-running recital series by Fubuki Koshiji, presented at venues such as the Nissay Theatre. Centered on chanson, it fused singing, spoken presence, and staging, elevating postwar Japanese stage song into a theatrical form.

A representative Koshiji stage work that brought chanson into theatrical space through song, speech, and direction.

A theatrical achievement centered on Kobo Abe’s plays “Mihitsu no koi” and “Guidebook.” Through an abandoned community and the institutional gaze of tourism, the works question the individual and the group, violence, and responsibility.

Abe’s characteristic allegory and absurdity sharply illuminate questions of community and responsibility.