Morio Kita

Awards

• 1960: Akutagawa Prize, for the novel, In The Corner Of Night And Fog, which takes its name from Nacht und Nebel, the Nazi campaign to eliminate Jews, the mentally ill and other minorities. The novel concerns the moral quandary of staff at a German mental hospital during the final years of the 2nd World War. Faced with demands from the SS that the most severely ill patients be segregated for transportation to a special camp, where it is obvious that they will be eliminated, the more morally conscious of the doctors make desperate efforts to protect the patients without outwardly defying the authorities. A parallel theme is the personal tragedy of a young Japanese researcher affiliated with the mental hospital, whose own schizophrenia has been triggered by the disappearance of his half-Jewish wife.

  Novels

• Ghosts
• Briefly noted in The New Yorker 60/48 : p. 117

  Essays

• Papa wa Tanoshii Sōutubyō

  TV

• Nescafé Gold Blend CM
• Tetsuko no Heya