Akira Higashiyama

I'll be honest — Akira Higashiyama is the kind of writer who sneaks up on you. Born in Taiwan in 1968 and raised in Japan, he writes in Japanese but carries this restless, cross-cultural energy that gives his fiction an edge most purely domestic authors just don't have. Winning the Naoki Prize in 2015 was the moment the mainstream finally caught up to what crime fiction readers had already known since he took the "Kono Mystery" grand prize back in 2002. What really impresses me is the range: hardboiled crime, coming-of-age, historical — he moves between them without losing his voice. The fact that he keeps his private life almost completely off the radar makes you feel like every bit of himself goes straight onto the page, and honestly, with a body of work this decorated, that trade-off seems worth it.

Name (English)

Akira Higashiyama

Name (Japanese)

東山彰良

Reading

ひがしやま あきら

Born

September 11, 1968 (age 57)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Virgo / Monkey

Occupation

novelist / screenwriter / writer

University

Seinan Gakuin University

Awards & achievements

• 2008 Haruhiko Ōyabu Award
• 2015 Naoki Prize
• 2016 Chūōkōron Award
• 2017 Sakunosuke Oda Award
• 2018 Yomiuri Prize
• 2018 Junichi Watanabe Award

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9D%B1%E5%B1%B1%E5%BD%B0%E8%89%AF
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q9316735

Tags

• novelist
• screenwriter
• writer

Last updated

2026-06-02

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.