As widely reported, 75-year old Kuroda Natsuko has won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for her work「ａｂさんご」and is thus the oldest person to ever win the prize.

I’ll be honest and say that when the shortlist was announced, I cynically assumed that she would win simply because of the sensationalism inherent in her “record-breaking” age. However, it does seem like the work itself is quite sensational too, as the work ambitiously contains no pronouns and is written horizontally instead of vertically to depict “the memories of a child whose life with a parent gradually crumbles.”

Speaking of “record-breaking” ages, the Naoki Prize was split amongst two winners: 57-year old Abe Ryutaro and 23-year old Asai Ryo. Asai is the youngest to win the Naoki Prize in the post-war era, and his work 「何者」depicts the ordeals of job-hunting university students (and includes Twitter posts as part of the narrative). Abe’s historical novel 「等伯」is about the painter Hasegawa Tohoku.