Hyakken Uchida


Hyakken Uchida was a Japanese author and academic.

Biography

He was born in Okayama, to a family of sake brewers whose business later went bankrupt. His real name is Eizo Uchida. He became a pupil of Natsume Sōseki in 1911. He graduated from Tokyo University in 1914. He became professor of German at Imperial Japanese Army Academy in 1916. He later taught at Hosei University. He is the main subject of Akira Kurosawa's last film, Madadayo. His novel, Disk of Sarasate is the inspiration for the film, Zigeunerweisen. He is the author of more than fifteen volumes of writings including I am a Cat: The Fake Version, and Gates Close at Dusk. In Japan he is well known as a passionate railfan and he made some works on railway travel. Though a great literary figure in Japan, he currently only has one book translated into English: Realm of the Dead. That volume also includes the collection Triumphal Entry into Ryojun. A translated excerpt from another collection, Hyakkien Zuihitsu, appeared in the JAL inflight magazine Skyward, January 2006: "Small Round Things." He had two sons and three daughters.

Novels