Ira Ishida (born 1960) is a Japanese novelist. After graduating from the Faculty of Economics at Seikei University, he worked for an advertising production company and later became a freelance copywriter. He made his literary debut after winning the All Yomimono Mystery Prize for New Writers for "Ikebukuro West Gate Park" in 1997. Set largely in contemporary Tokyo, his fiction addresses youth crime, poverty, romance, sexuality, and generational division through a fast-paced and accessible narrative style. His best-known work, "4TEEN," received the Naoki Prize in 2003. The linked collection of eight stories follows four fourteen-year-old boys living in Tsukishima over the course of a year. Tetsuro, Dai, Jun, and Naoto, who has a premature-aging disorder, rely on their friendship as they confront romance, sexuality, family problems, violence, illness, and death on their way toward their fifteenth birthdays.
