Matsutaro Kawaguchi

Matsutarō Kawaguchi 川口 松太郎
Matsutarō Kawaguchi
Born	(1899-10-01)1 October 1899 Tokyo, Japan
Died	9 June 1985(1985-06-09) (aged 85) Japan
Occupation	Novelist, Screenwriter

Matsutarō Kawaguchi (川口 松太郎, Kawaguchi Matsutarō^?, 1 October 1899 – 9 June 1985) was a Japanese novelist, playwright and movie producer active during the Shōwa period of Japan.

Kawaguchi was born in the plebeian Asakusa district of Tokyo into an impoverished family. He was forced to leave home at the age of 14 to seek employment. He started to write in his spare time, while working at various jobs, which included working in a pawn shop, as a tailor, a policeman and as a postman at one point in his life. He came to be acquainted with author Kubota Mantaro, who encouraged him in his literary efforts.

Kawaguchi was arrested in Kamakura, Kanagawa in 1933, along with fellow literati Kume Masao and Satomi Ton for illegal card gambling.

In 1935, Kawaguchi won the first Naoki Prize for a short story titled Tsuruhachi Tsurujirō. He followed this with a serialized novel, Aizen Katsura, a melodramatic love story involving a nurse and a doctor, which ran from 1936-1938. The story became a tremendously popular bestseller and gained him considerable fame. It was later made into a movie starring Kinuyo Tanaka and Ken Uehara, and was the basis of numerous television series.