A novel by Miyoshi Ueda, himself marked by illness, portraying acquaintances facing fatal disease while contemplating the fragility of life and human dignity. Its calm, reflective prose deepens the theme of life and death.

A quiet gaze upon illness and death reveals the preciousness of life.

Akira Yoshimura's Hagoku is a documentary-style novel based on a life prisoner who repeatedly escaped during the Showa era. It depicts the prison system, the contest between prisoner and guards, and the upheaval of wartime and postwar society, focusing not only on escape techniques but on the collision between confinement and obsession.

A novel tracing the struggle between an escape artist and prison guards amid wartime and postwar turmoil.

Akimasa Kanno's Shigaku Sozo is a critical study of modern Japanese poetry centered on Hakushu Kitahara, Sakutaro Hagiwara, Tatsuji Miyoshi, Shizuo Ito, and Junzaburo Nishiwaki. Through close readings, it links each poet's language with the formation of a modern poetics.

A critical work tracing how Japanese modern poetry generated its own poetics through close reading.

Midori Wakakuwa's Iconology of the Rose studies the rose as a symbol of love, life, womanhood, power, and religion, tracing its meanings through Western art and intellectual history. It applies iconology by moving from visual detail to deeper cultural structures.

An art-historical work reading Western symbolic histories of love and life through images of the rose.

Tango at the End of Winter is a stage work by Kunio Shimizu starring Mikijiro Hira, centered on a former film actor in an aging cinema and shaped by memory, performance, aging, and lost time. Princess Medea, based on Greek tragedy, became one of Hira's signature stage works, bringing betrayal, revenge, motherhood, and ruin into a sharply physical performance.

The actor's body brings both an old cinema and ancient tragedy into the present.

The film Mahjong Horoki follows a young man entering the gambling world amid postwar disorder and the vivid hustlers around him. For Kayako looks at family, ethnicity, and social boundaries through the relationship between a Korean-Japanese young man and a girl, with Shohei Ando's cinematography shaping the atmosphere and solitude of both films.

A cinematographic achievement that captures postwar gambling shadows and the gaze of young people at social margins.

Maria Stuarda, Madama Butterfly, and Iwaiuta ga Nagareru Yoru ni were opera productions associated with the Japan Opera Foundation. Through historical drama, Puccini's tragedy, and Japanese-language opera, they demonstrated the combined strength of vocal performance, staging, and company work.

An achievement in company performance spanning Western opera and Japanese-language opera.

Shichiki-ochi is a Japanese dance work based on a Noh piece about Minamoto no Yoritomo and his followers fleeing after defeat at Ishibashiyama. Nishikawa Senzo's staging transforms the classical tale of flight, loyalty, and renewal into a tightly structured dance performance.

A work that renders warriors in flight through the forms and tension of classical dance.

The Ink Huangshan series is a group of paintings that renders Huangshan's strange peaks, clouds, and mountain atmosphere through ink tones and open space. Akira Shimobo's work links the tradition of landscape painting with a modern Japanese-painting sensibility beyond mere topographical depiction.

A series that turns the atmosphere of Huangshan into modern landscape painting through ink and space.

Toshio Suda's Family is a painting that suggests familial presence and distance through figures and interior space. Although grounded in everyday subject matter, it places intimacy, solitude, and generational distance within a quiet composition.

A painting that presents the familiar subject of family through quiet composition and distance between figures.

A Noh performance achievement by Shintaro Awaya, recognized for the artistry and embodied expression of a Noh performer. As a stage work, Senju shows the tension of classical performance through chant, dance, and timing.

The breath of chant and dance creates the taut time of classical Noh.

A film and television work by Shoichiro Sasaki in the River series, poetically combining sound, light, landscape, and human presence. Set in Slovakia, it turns the relation between image and sound itself into narrative.

Light and sound flow like a river, layering human presence onto a foreign landscape.

A performance achievement by Hiroko Koda in recitation and stage expression, bringing literary works to life through voice. Winter Parting and An Evening of Ichiyo deliver literary scenes through timing and vocal color.

The timing and resonance of the voice transform literary scenes into stage time.

Tango at the End of Winter is a stage work by Kunio Shimizu starring Mikijiro Hira, centered on a former film actor in an aging cinema and shaped by memory, performance, aging, and lost time. Princess Medea, based on Greek tragedy, became one of Hira's signature stage works, bringing betrayal, revenge, motherhood, and ruin into a sharply physical performance.

The actor's body brings both an old cinema and ancient tragedy into the present.