Bungakukai Newcomer Award
ぶんがくかいしんじんしょう
Open submission newcomer award of the literary magazine "Bungakukai" published by Bungeishunju.
- Established
- 1955
- Organizer
- Bungeishunju
- Category
- Pure Literature
- Selection Method
- Open call
- Target
- Newcomer
- Frequency
- 1 per year
- Application Deadline
- around September
- Announcement Period
- around May
- Status
- Active
Description
Solicited once a year, the winning work is published in the May issue of "Bungakukai". The winner receives a cash prize of 500,000 yen and a commemorative gift. Its key feature is the relatively short manuscript length of 70-150 sheets of 400-character manuscript paper compared to other newcomer literary awards sponsored by pure literature magazines.
Prize
- Main Prize
- Cash prize of 500,000 yen and commemorative gift
- Cash Prize
- 500,000 JPY
- Commemorative gift
Related Awards
- Gunzō New Writers' Prize
- Shincho New Writers' Prize
- Subaru Literary Prize
- Bungei Prize
- Osamu Dazai Prize
Past Winners
The protagonist Runa, who works at a direct-sales shop of a miso manufacturer, receives news that her former coworker nicknamed 'Solitaire Ojisan' (Mr. Solitaire) has died in a fire. After attending his funeral, forgotten memories and unverifiable thoughts begin to surface. A literary short story that confronts the quiet details of everyday life with the weighty theme of death, written in a Kyoto dialect–tinged voice.
Kuronoda, who used to work with me, has died. Things I had forgotten, things I could never have confirmed — they drift up, one after another, without end.
A short story set in a high school classroom during summer, alternating between the lively debates of a group of high school girls and the inner world of the female teacher watching over them. In the unofficial 'girls' gathering' organized by Takagi, topics fly fast: 'Should perpetrators of sexual violence be required to undergo vasectomy?' and 'Who deserves to be Ren Sato's girlfriend?' The teacher listens idly, sucking on Sakuma Drops candy, while memories of past male students and long-forgotten incidents surface and blur into fantasy. The cool air of the classroom and the teacher's dissolving consciousness intertwine, illuminating the gap in perception between adults and the young.
From the third-floor classroom of the north building, Class 3-3, the ochre-colored schoolyard is clearly visible.
Ryusuke Mizushima, a semi-professional MMA fighter, leads a double life — competing in fights while working part-time as a caregiver at a facility for people with severe behavioral disorders in the mountains. Through the parallel worlds of competitive fighting and physical restraint in care work, the novel interrogates the boundary between violence and kindness, strength and vulnerability.
The spotlight bleaches everything white. There is only one way to escape from a full mount — from the opening fight scene, the physical and psychological weight of being pinned is rendered in precise, unrelenting detail.
A story centered on Makoto, a practical training assistant at a commercial high school, and Runa, a second-year student there. The two, each struggling with frameworks of femininity and masculinity, come together amid the school's relentless unreasonableness. Standing between school and student, the work explores the absence of easy answers that binary notions of understanding cannot capture.
"So which one of the LGBT letters are you, anyway?" The school where Makoto worked was filled with injustices impossible to resist.
A diviner living a quiet, insular life receives an unexpected call from her middle school friend Miki, who confesses she was raped by her husband's brother and is now pregnant. The only condition the family will accept for an abortion is that it be performed by a legendary practitioner known as "Ejiu." Guided by tarot, the protagonist travels to a remote island in search of this elusive figure, moving through a dreamlike journey toward the site of the procedure. The novel asks who owns a body, and who gets to decide — tracing each character's claim to being, in the end, no one's but their own.
"It's not about whose it is" — a strange and urgent journey about bodily ownership and the meaning of choice.
A gay office worker in his second year of employment and his college-student partner try to enjoy a quiet Sunday, only to be repeatedly interrupted by an ally (LGBT supporter) woman who is the partner's classmate. Told through a non-chronological structure of 19 rearranged 'pulp' sections, the story weaves together scenes of their peaceful Sundays and the days when plans with the ally woman intrude.
Through a non-chronological structure of 19 rearranged 'pulp' sections, scenes of their peaceful Sundays and the days shadowed by plans with the ally woman are interwoven and told.