Sasaki Ko is a Japanese historical novelist from Oita Prefecture and a graduate of Waseda University’s School of Letters, Arts and Sciences. He made his literary debut after receiving the ninth Kadokawa Haruki Novel Prize in 2017 for “Ranse o Yuke: Oda no Adabana, Takigawa Kazumasu,” a novel about the life of Takigawa Kazumasu, a general who served Oda Nobunaga. “Tenkaichi no Herikutsumono” depicts Itabeoka Kosetsu, a diplomat and Buddhist monk serving the Hojo clan, confronting Toyotomi Hideyoshi and other powerful figures through argument and negotiation during the siege of Odawara. His other novels include “Keijiro, Kita e,” about the later journeys of Maeda Keiji; “Ieyasu no Takeki Monotachi,” centered on the Tokugawa forces at the Battle of Mikatagahara; “Sanada no Tsuwamono-domo,” about retainers of the Sanada clan; and “Tarashi no Shiro,” which reimagines the legend of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s rapid construction of Sunomata Castle. His fiction often approaches Japan’s age of civil war through diplomats, retainers, defeated commanders, and other figures who stood outside the conventional image of the heroic warlord.
