Japanese Literary Awards

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daigaku dokushojin taishō

Edition 5 (2012)

Literature

Winners

6 people
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