Background
Kojiro Serizawa was born on May 4, 1897 in Shizuoka, Japan.
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光治良 芹沢
Kojiro Serizawa was born on May 4, 1897 in Shizuoka, Japan.
In 1910 he was awarded a scholarship that allowed him to attend the local schools, and in 1915 he became an assistant teacher there, before starting studies in French law from 1916 at the Dai-ichi Kotogakko, now part of Tokyo University. His first short stories appeared in the university magazine. In 1919, he switched to economics.
It was around this time that he had what he described as a platonic love affair with a woman whom he calls "MA". After graduating from Tokyo University in 1922, he became a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce. But in 1925, after she had been studying in Germany, his mysterious platonic love got married in Berlin, and Serizawa never recovered from the emotional shock, though in the same year he himself married a woman he was to love deeply all his life.
They left for Paris, where he studied economics and sociology at the Sorbonne for four years, during which time he met many prominent writers and artists, and travelled widely in Britain, Italy and Spain. But the stress of completing his graduation thesis brought on tuberculosis, and he had to enter a Swiss sanatorium, a situation resembling that in Thomas Mann's novel The Magic Mountain. He slowly got better, and in 1929 returned to Tokyo with his wife and two-year-old daughter.
He had begun teaching economics at Chuo University, and during the next two years his copious writings appeared in various journals and newspapers; he became known as a writer with strong individuality and liberal ideals. In 1932, he began writing a serial novel for the Asahi, but this met with the disapproval of the university authorities, and rather than be censored he resigned his post. He decided to devote his life to literature and the defence of free expression in all forms of writing. In 1935, he helped form the Japan branch of the PEN Club. In 1938, he travelled to China. When the Pacific war broke out he refused military service, and was exempted because of his weak health.
In 1951, Serizawa attended the International PEN Club meeting in Lausanne, and had an audience with the Pope. His best-known novel, Pari ni shisu ("To Die in Paris", 1953), was a best-seller and translated into French, becoming one of the first modern Japanese novels to make an impression on the French public. Another of his novels, Samurai no matsuei ("Descendant of the Samurai", 1955), was a success in both French and Polish translations. These two French translations won the Academie Francaise prize in 1957, and in the same year Serizawa was nominated for the Nobel prize.
In 1970 a literary museum bearing his name and that of another great writer associated with Izu, the late Yasushi Inoue, was opened in Numazu, to house a collection of their books and papers.
After his wife's death in 1981, Serizawa stopped writing. Four years later, at the age of 89, he fell mortally ill.
