Japanese Literary Awards

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daigaku dokushojin taishō

A literary award aimed at selecting the books that university students most want to read.

Literature
Established
2008
Organizer
University Book Lovers Grand Prize Executive Committee, Publishing Culture Industry Promotion Foundation
Category
Publishing Culture and Book Culture
Selection Method
Open call
Target
Professional
Frequency
1 per year
Application Deadline
around January–February
Announcement Period
around May
Status
Active

Description

Selected through nominations and voting by university literary clubs and circles across Japan, this is a literary award whose purpose is to choose the books that university students most want to read. Because the entry criteria are based on 'publication year' rather than 'year of announcement' like typical literary awards, it includes new translations and paperback editions, and covers all genres regardless of pure literature, translations, non-fiction, light novels, etc.

Selection

Selection Process

Nomination
Judges University literary clubs and literary circles
Voting
Judges University students

Criteria

  • Selecting books that we want university students to read
  • Based on publication year

Related Awards

  • Literary prize
  • List of literary prizes
  • Bookstore Grand Prize

Official Resources

http://www.jpic.or.jp/dokushojin/

Past Winners

Yutaka Kono こうの ゆたか grand prize

いなくなれ、群青 is an award-winning work by 河野裕. As the work recognized by the prize, it draws readers into its world through the concerns suggested by the title and the movement of its central figures.

Through いなくなれ、群青, the work leads readers toward the author viewpoint and the core of the story.

award-winning workcontemporary literaturecharacter depictionmemory and time
Miyuki Miyabe みやべ みゆき 2nd place

ソロモンの偽証 is an award-winning work by 宮部みゆき. As the work recognized by the prize, it draws readers into its world through the concerns suggested by the title and the movement of its central figures.

Through ソロモンの偽証, the work leads readers toward the author viewpoint and the core of the story.

award-winning workcontemporary literaturecharacter depictionmemory and time
チャールズ・ユウ ちゃーるず・ゆう 2nd place

SF的な宇宙で安全に暮らすっていうこと is an award-winning work by チャールズ・ユウ. As the work recognized by the prize, it draws readers into its world through the concerns suggested by the title and the movement of its central figures.

Through SF的な宇宙で安全に暮らすっていうこと, the work leads readers toward the author viewpoint and the core of the story.

320 pages
award-winning workcontemporary literaturecharacter depictionmemory and time
Toshiya Ohno おおの としや 4th place

都立桜の台高校帰宅部 is an award-winning work by 大野敏哉. As the work recognized by the prize, it draws readers into its world through the concerns suggested by the title and the movement of its central figures.

Through 都立桜の台高校帰宅部, the work leads readers toward the author viewpoint and the core of the story.

255 pages
award-winning workcontemporary literaturecharacter depictionmemory and time
Keigo Higashino ひがしの けいご 5th place

虚ろな十字架 is an award-winning work by 東野圭吾. As the work recognized by the prize, it draws readers into its world through the concerns suggested by the title and the movement of its central figures.

Through 虚ろな十字架, the work leads readers toward the author viewpoint and the core of the story.

326 pages
award-winning workcontemporary literaturecharacter depictionmemory and time
Kotaro Isaka いさか こうたろう grand prize

マリアビートル is a work by 伊坂幸太郎 known for its careful treatment of the themes described in the Japanese bibliographic record.

マリアビートル is a work by 伊坂幸太郎 that continues to draw attention through its award history.

award-winning literaturememoryhuman relationships
Yuri Shibamura しばむら ゆうり 2nd place

富士学校まめたん研究分室 is an award-recognized work by 芝村裕吏. It can be read as a literary work shaped by its characters' choices and their relationship with society and time.

富士学校まめたん研究分室 is a work by 芝村裕吏 that continues to draw attention through its award history.

award-winning literaturememoryhuman relationships
Mitsunori Enami えなみ みつのり 2nd place

鳥葬 まだ人間じゃない is an award-recognized work by 江波光則. It can be read as a literary work shaped by its characters' choices and their relationship with society and time.

鳥葬 まだ人間じゃない is a work by 江波光則 that continues to draw attention through its award history.

award-winning literaturememoryhuman relationships
ジュノ・ディアス じゅの・でぃあす 4th place

こうしてお前は彼女にフラれる is an award-recognized work by ジュノ・ディアス. It can be read as a literary work shaped by its characters' choices and their relationship with society and time.

こうしてお前は彼女にフラれる is a work by ジュノ・ディアス that continues to draw attention through its award history.

award-winning literaturememoryhuman relationships
Nitadori Kei にどり けい 5th place

昨日まで不思議の校舎 is a work by 似鳥鶏 known for its careful treatment of the themes described in the Japanese bibliographic record.

昨日まで不思議の校舎 is a work by 似鳥鶏 that continues to draw attention through its award history.

award-winning literaturememoryhuman relationships
Housuke Nojiri のじり ほうすけ grand prize

A linked science-fiction collection that connects video-sharing culture, vocal synthesis, and space development. Its near-future optimism turns internet participation into a force that reaches beyond Earth.

Network culture and space dreams meet in a bright near-future SF collection.

311 pages
space developmentnetwork culturevocal synthesis
伊藤計劃×円城塔 いとう けいかく × えんじょう とう 2nd place

A speculative novel set in a nineteenth century transformed by technology for reanimating the dead. The journey of John Watson becomes an inquiry into bodies, souls, empire, and the meaning of consciousness.

A compact work whose appeal lies in the pressure of memory, language, and the lives it depicts.

459 pages
the deadempireconsciousness
Hiroko Minagawa みながわ ひろこ 2nd place

A mystery set around a wartime mission school, where a notebook passed among girls blurs fiction and reality. Its atmosphere combines schoolgirl secrecy, gothic beauty, and narrative traps.

A compact work whose appeal lies in the pressure of memory, language, and the lives it depicts.

352 pages
girls' schoolmetafictiongothic mystery
Chohei Kanbayashi かんばやし ちょうへい 4th place

いま集合的無意識を、 is a Japanese literary work by 神林長平. The book is presented here through confirmed bibliographic sources and award records.

A compact work whose appeal lies in the pressure of memory, language, and the lives it depicts.

256 pages
memorylanguagehuman relationships
Genichiro Takahashi たかはし げんいちろう 5th place

A collection of stories about fathers, children, stories, and the fragile courage needed after disaster. Familiar literary figures and everyday conversations open into reflections on fiction's power to resist emptiness.

A compact work whose appeal lies in the pressure of memory, language, and the lives it depicts.

220 pages
memorylanguagehuman relationships
Yusuke Kishi きし ゆうすけ 6th place

A young man transformed into a game piece is drawn into a red-versus-blue battle in an otherworldly space resembling Hashima Island. The novel combines game rules with survival tension while depicting desire and obsession with competition.

On an otherworldly battlefield, the logic of competition exposes human darkness.

496 pages
game fictionsurvivalshogiotherworld
Ito Keikaku いとう けいかく grand prize

A dystopian science-fiction novel set in a future society where medicine and welfare have become systems of total control. Through the past of three girls and disturbances in a mature managed society, it asks what is lost in the name of health and happiness.

In a world where health and happiness are managed, the boundaries of consciousness and freedom begin to waver.

384 pages
dystopiabiopolitical controlfree willconsciousnessscience fiction
Hideo Furukawa ふるかわ ひでお 2nd place

A work that transforms the author's journey and thought toward Fukushima's Hamadori region after the Great East Japan Earthquake into fiction. The devastated landscape, invisible radiation, wounded horses, and characters from an earlier novel intersect as it searches for the possibilities of prayer and imagination.

A writer's journey to Fukushima becomes a language of prayer linking reality and fiction.

132 pages
earthquake disasterFukushimaprayerhorsesthe power of fiction
Kazuki Sakuraba さくらば かずき 2nd place

A linked novel set in a reading club hidden in a corner of an elite girls' school, tracing a century of secrets and defiance among its students. Reading, theater, rumor, and resistance to institutional order overlap to create another literary history inside the enclosed world of the school.

A secret reading club begins to tell a century-long history of girls' defiance.

257 pages
readinggirls' schoolsecret societygirlhoodhistory
Arikawa Hiro ありかわ ひろ 4th place

The first volume in a series set in a near future where the freedom to read is threatened by the Media Betterment Act. It follows Iku Kasahara as she becomes a library task-force member, combining resistance to censorship, harsh training, and romantic tension into energetic entertainment.

In a library force that fights to protect books, Iku Kasahara faces both her ideal and reality.

404 pages
censorshiplibrariesfreedomgrowthromantic comedy
Mahoro Furuno ふるの まほろ 5th place

A long novel that fuses high-school band-club youth, fantasy, science-fiction devices, and formal mystery through an extravagant style. A beheading amid preparations for a music competition destabilizes the logic of the school world.

Youth, fantasy, science fiction, and formal deduction swirl around a school beheading.

765 pages
formal mysteryschool settingbrass bandfantasyscience fiction
En Mikami みかみ えん 6th place

A bibliomystery set in an antiquarian bookshop in Kamakura. Shioriko Shinokawa, a deeply shy shopkeeper with extraordinary knowledge of old books, solves secrets tied to books, where the histories of volumes and the emotions of their owners shape each mystery.

Traces left in old books reveal people's secrets and emotional wounds.

322 pages
antiquarian booksmysteryKamakuramemoryrelationships
Tow Ubukata うぶかた てい grand prize

天地明察 is an award-related work by 冲方丁. It can be introduced through its subject, setting, and the emotional movement of its characters, with bibliographic identifiers recorded only when a standalone book edition could be confirmed.

天地明察 offers a concise entry point into the work's setting and concerns.

480 pages
文学賞対象作人間ドラマ物語性
Ito Keikaku いとう けいかく 2nd place

Genocidal Organ is a near-future science fiction novel centered on Clavis Shepherd, a U.S. special forces officer pursuing John Paul, a man suspected of being behind mass killings around the world. Against a backdrop of military technology and information control, it asks how violence becomes systematized through language, war, and governance.

What is the organ that produces genocide? From future battlefields, the novel presses into the darker side of ethics and language.

432 pages
near-future science fictionwar and languagemanaged societyethics
Minato Kanae みなと かなえ 3rd place

Confessions opens with the monologue of a middle school teacher who has lost her daughter, then shifts among several narrators to reveal the truth of the incident and each character's guilt. It is a tense mystery about revenge, parent-child bonds, and the distortions of a closed school environment.

One confession changes the air in a classroom and brings hidden guilt into view.

268 pages
revengeschoolparent and childmulti-perspective mystery
Kotaro Isaka いさか こうたろう 4th place

The Desert is a campus coming-of-age novel about friendships, love, chance encounters, and unsettling incidents in student life, told with Kotaro Isaka's characteristic wit and unease. Mahjong, strange coincidences, and discomfort with society intersect as the years toward graduation unfold.

Even in a world like a desert, the students laugh, lose their way, and confirm one another's presence.

410 pages
youthcampus lifefriendshipchance and incident
Michael Joseph Sandel まいける さんでる 5th place

Justice introduces Michael Sandel's arguments about justice, freedom, equality, and moral responsibility through concrete social questions. Drawing on utilitarianism, libertarianism, Kant, Aristotle, and other traditions, it invites readers to reconsider their own judgments.

What is justice? The book starts from familiar disputes and asks what grounds our judgments.

384 pages
political philosophyjusticeethicspublic life
Honobu Yonezawa よねざわ ほのぶ 6th place

The Incite Mill is a mystery novel in which people lured by a high reward enter a closed experimental space and are drawn into a deadly game of suspicion. Its rules and devices echo classic puzzle mysteries while showing how judgment falters under extreme pressure.

A locked facility, a reward, and mutual suspicion test the participants' reason.

447 pages
puzzle mysteryclosed settingpsychological gamesurvival
Tomihiko Morimi もりみ とみひこ grand prize

A youthful romance following a black-haired maiden walking through Kyoto nights and the senior student pursuing her, as bars, used-book fairs, and a campus festival unfold fantastically. Encounters with eccentric people turn love and coincidence into a vivid celebration.

A youthful romance following a black-haired maiden walking through Kyoto nights and the senior student pursuing her, as bars, used-book fairs, and a campus festival unfold fantastically.

336 pages
Kyotoyouthful romancefantastic nightchains of coincidence
Arikawa Hiro ありかわ ひろ 2nd place

A story in which a woman takes in a young man who has collapsed outdoors and moves toward love through a life of gathering and cooking wild plants. Nearby nature, meals, and a shared life with secrets create a gentle romantic rhythm.

A story in which a woman takes in a young man who has collapsed outdoors and moves toward love through a life of gathering and cooking wild plants.

359 pages
野草料理同居生活恋愛日常の自然
Haruki Murakami むらかみ はるき 3rd place

A long novel in which Aomame and Tengo, living separate lives, draw closer in a subtly altered world. Religious communities, violence, and the power of storytelling expand the border between reality and the otherworldly.

A long novel in which Aomame and Tengo, living separate lives, draw closer in a subtly altered world.

554 pages
並行世界孤独な恋宗教と暴力物語の力
Kotaro Isaka いさか こうたろう 4th place

A novel that uses a fable-like voice to portray the birth and solitude of a genius baseball player. Expectations, worship, and unease around overwhelming talent illuminate one person's strangeness beyond the frame of sports fiction.

A novel that uses a fable-like voice to portray the birth and solitude of a genius baseball player.

221 pages
野球天才寓話solitude
Honobu Yonezawa よねざわ ほのぶ 5th place

A young adult mystery in which a boy visits a world where he was never born and faces the meaning of his family and his own existence. By comparing two realities, it quietly probes loss and self-understanding.

A young adult mystery in which a boy visits a world where he was never born and faces the meaning of his family and his own existence.

312 pages
別の世界家族自己認識青春ミステリ
Maijo Otarō まいじょう おうたろう grand prize

A novel in which the story of a writer who has lost his beloved intertwines with the act of writing itself. With excessive verbal speed, it confronts loss, love, and the limits of fiction.

The repeated words of love may not reach the dead, but they keep the story moving.

194 pages
lovelosswriting
Koroku Inumura いぬむら ころく 2nd place

とある飛空士への追憶 is a ライトノベル by 犬村小六. As an award-recognized work, it concentrates the author's concerns and explores its subject through a distinctive style.

とある飛空士への追憶 condenses the author's central concerns behind its brief title.

344 pages
memorylanguagerelationships
Tsunehiro Uno うの つねひろ 3rd place

ゼロ年代の想像力 is a 批評 by 宇野常寛. As an award-recognized work, it concentrates the author's concerns and explores its subject through a distinctive style.

ゼロ年代の想像力 condenses the author's central concerns behind its brief title.

352 pages
memorylanguagerelationships
Tanaka Romio たなか ろみお 4th place

AURA 〜魔竜院光牙最後の闘い〜 is a 青春小説 by 田中ロミオ. As an award-recognized work, it concentrates the author's concerns and explores its subject through a distinctive style.

AURA 〜魔竜院光牙最後の闘い〜 condenses the author's central concerns behind its brief title.

360 pages
memorylanguagerelationships
Keigo Higashino ひがしの けいご 5th place

A mystery in which a genius mathematician’s perfect crime to protect his neighbor confronts a physicist’s reasoning. Logical elegance and unrewarded love meet sharply at the ending.

At the center of the unsolved puzzle lies an act of profound devotion.

360 pages
mysterydevotionmathematics
Minato Kanae みなと かなえ 6th place

告白 is a ミステリー小説 by 湊かなえ. As an award-recognized work, it concentrates the author's concerns and explores its subject through a distinctive style.

告白 condenses the author's central concerns behind its brief title.

268 pages
memorylanguagerelationships
Arthur C. Clarke あーさー・C・くらーく grand prize

Childhood's End is Arthur C. Clarke's science fiction novel about humanity's evolution and the end of individuality after the arrival of an alien species that governs Earth.

Behind rulers who bring peace, the future of the human species begins to waver.

452 pages
science fictionevolutionalienshumanity
Yuya Sato さとう ともや 2nd place

A Thousand Novels and Backbeard is Yuya Sato's novel about the compulsion and desire to write fiction, told in an excessive voice as obsession with fiction invades reality.

Faith in fiction swallows the writer's life and self-consciousness.

299 pages
writingself-consciousnessmetafictionyouth
Arikawa Hiro ありかわ ひろ 3rd place

Shio no Machi is Hiro Arikawa's debut novel, set in a world where a salt disaster turns people into pillars of salt. A young romance and a military struggle intersect within collapsing everyday life.

As the world sinks into salt, the wish to protect someone drives the story forward.

344 pages
science fictionromanceapocalypseSelf-Defense Forces
Kazuki Sakuraba さくらば かずき 4th place

A Reading Club for Young People is a linked novel written as the chronicle of a reading club at an elite girls' school, following girls who live as outsiders within the school.

The reading club becomes a small kingdom where the school's outsiders protect themselves.

231 pages
readinggirls' schooloutsiderschronicle
Tanaka Romio たなか ろみお 5th place

Humanity Has Declined is Romeo Tanaka's light novel set in a world where diminished humans coexist with fairies, using a gentle voice to deliver sharp black humor.

The cute fairies' behavior strangely reflects a declining human society.

259 pages
post-apocalypsefairiesblack humorlight novel