Eiji Yoshikawa
| Eiji Yoshikawa 吉川 英治 |
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| Born | Hidetsugu Yoshikawa 吉川英次 August 11, 1892 Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan |
| Died | September 7, 1962 (aged 70) Tokyo, Japan |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Nationality | Japanese |
| Ethnicity | Japanese |
| Citizenship | Japanese |
| Genre | Historical drama |
| Subject | Japan History |
| Notable works | Miyamoto Musashi |
| Spouse | Yasu Akazawa (m. 1923), Fumiko Ikedo (m. 1937) |
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Eiji Yoshikawa (吉川 英治 Yoshikawa Eiji?, August 11, 1892 – September 7, 1962) was a Japanese historical novelist. Among his best-known novels are revisions of older classics. He was mainly influenced by classics such as The Tale of the Heike, Tale of Genji, Water Margin, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, many of which he retold in his own style. As an example, Yoshikawa took up Taiko's original manuscript in 15 volumes to retell it in a more accessible tone and reduce it to only two volumes. His other books also serve similar purposes and, although most of his novels are not original works, he created a huge amount of work and a renewed interest in the past. He was awarded the Cultural Order of Merit in 1960 (the highest award for a man of letters in Japan), the Order of the Sacred Treasure and the Mainichi Art Award just before his death from cancer in 1962. He is cited as one of the best historical novelists in Japan.
He was born Hidetsugu Yoshikawa (吉川英次 Yoshikawa Hidetsugu?) in Kanagawa Prefecture, in what is now a part of Yokohama. Because of his father's failed business, he had to drop out of primary school to work when he was 11 years old. When he was 18, after a near-fatal accident working at the Yokohama docks, he moved to Tokyo and became an apprentice in a gold lacquer workshop. Around this time he became interested in comic haiku. He joined a poetry society and started writing comic haiku under the pseudonym "Kijiro".
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