Tensei Kono
Tensei Kono was a prominent Japanese mystery and science fiction writer who won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award and was a two-time finalist for the Naoki Prize. His short fiction including his often-reprinted story "Triceratops" has been translated into English in anthologies such as Speculative Japan: Outstanding Tales of Japanese Science Fiction and Fantasy, The Best Japanese Science Fiction Stories and The World Treasury of Science Fiction. In total, he published more than 30 novels and short story collections.
Life
Kono was born in Kōchi, Kōchi Prefecture and studied French literature at Keio University. While at the university he began writing poems, plays, and fantasy novels, publishing his play The Fallen Hawk in the school's literary magazine.He died at the age of 77 on January 29, 2012 due to aspiration pneumonia.
Writing career
In 1958, Kono dropped out of Keio University and began working in television. The following year he submitted Going My Way to a call for original novels for the Nippon Television program Night Prism, where his work received an honorable mention. He also began publishing hard-boiled mystery stories in publications such as the Japanese edition of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. In 1960 he published the collection of short stories Young Men Die in the Sun and the following year the collection On the Asphalt. In 1964 he won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award for Satsui to iu Na no Kachiku. As a result of his success in mystery writing he was named one of the "three hard-boiled crows" alongside fellow authors Takashi Takajo and Haruhiko Ōyabu, all of whom were born in 1935.Kono's 1969 mystery novel Others' Castle was a finalist for the prestigious Naoki Prize, as was his 1974 book Group of Painting Knives.
In addition to writing mysteries, Kono also began writing science fiction and fantasy stories after meeting Masami Fukushima, the editor of SF Magazine. He became a prominent science fiction writer known for stories that mixed mysterious imagery from both nature and civilization. Among such works are his two collections of "city naturalist" short stories set in a surrealistic suburban landscape.
Kono's 1974 city naturalist story "Triceratops" is his work most frequently translated into English. The story was first published in English in the August 1982 issue of OMNI. The story is about a "normal, middle-class Japanese father and son who live in a subdivision normal in every way but one: the fabric of time is torn just enough to allow them to see dinosaurs in the streets." The story has since been reprinted in The Best Japanese Science Fiction Stories, The Fifth Omni Book of Science Fiction, and The World Treasury of Science Fiction.
His story "Hikari," originally published in 1976 in Shukan Shosetsu, was translated and printed in the 2007 anthology Speculative Japan: Outstanding Tales of Japanese Science Fiction and Fantasy. The story focuses on a narrator riding a train at night who seeing a distant city of shining light and then learns about the people who live there. In a review in Strange Horizons, "Hikari" was described by Niall Harrison as "an odd but haunting story, deeply sceptical of transcendence."
Kono's city naturalist series has been described as "delicately evocative" and "among the best of any Japanese SF writer," with the stories in the series compared to the works of Ray Bradbury. Kono's writings have also been compared to both Jorge Luis Borges and the early works of J. G. Ballard.
Awards
- 1959 Honorable Mention, Nippon Television's "Prism of the Night" Original Story Award for "Going My Way"
- 1964 Mystery Writers of Japan Award for Satsui to iu Na no Kachiku
- 1969 Finalist for the Naoki Prize for Others' Castle
- 1974 Finalist for the Naoki Prize for Group of Painting Knives
- 1975 Kadokawa Award for the novel ''Tomorrow the Birds Take Wing''