Yasuhiro Nagazono (born 1960) is a Japanese novelist who writes fiction for adults and younger readers. Born in Nagasaki Prefecture, he graduated from Nanzan University and worked at Recruit, serving as editor-in-chief of “Shushoku Journal” and founding editor-in-chief of the book magazine “Da Vinci.” In 1994, his coinage “shushoku hyogaki,” or employment ice age, received a special coinage award in Japan’s annual buzzword awards. He made his fiction debut in “Bungakukai” in 1999 and concentrated on writing from 2002. In 2013, he became a specially appointed professor in Taisho University’s Faculty of Communication and Culture. Following his editorial career, his writing explored the acquisition of language and encounters in which people speak to one another. His 2008 novel “Atarashii Zukan” follows Jun, a junior-high-school student encouraged to collect thoughts he cannot yet put into words in a sketchbook and make an encyclopedia of his own. In “Kotoba nanka Oboerun ja Nakatta: Shijin kara no Dengon,” Nagazono put the spoken words of Ryuichi Tamura into prose; the volume brings together the postwar poet’s messages to young people and twenty-five of his poems. His 2026 novel “Manaura Junrei” concerns Kosuke, an editor who suffers a subarachnoid hemorrhage at sixty and encounters his deceased father, Shozo, while hovering between life and death. Their conversations unfold as they visit places connected with their lives, including the father’s wartime past. Nagazono developed the book over five years, beginning with his own wish to have spoken more with his father.
