Nodoka Sakai is a Japanese novelist from Toyama Prefecture. Sakai studied Chinese literature at university and travelled extensively across China, including its western regions. “Mononofu Usagi!” received an Excellence Award at the sixth Bungeisha Bunko NEO Novel Awards in 2023 and was published as Sakai’s debut in 2024. It follows Usagi, a high school student practising iaido, as she confronts her former insecurities through a women’s sword-fighting tournament. “Ueda Musume wa Doga de Ikiru” explores the friendship of two schoolgirls making videos about Ueda, Nagano, and the tensions sparked by their encounter with a popular influencer. In 2025, Sakai won the seventeenth Kadokawa Haruki Novel Award for “Sajo no Okoku,” a historical novel set in the seventh-century Silk Road kingdom of Gaochang. It depicts a prince seeking a future for his country between Tang China and the Western Turks, while clashing with his father’s vision of its place in the region.
