Kaoru Shoji (born 1937), the pen name of Shoji Fukuda, is a Japanese novelist best known for his coming-of-age fiction. He graduated from the Department of Physics at the University of Tokyo and rose to prominence in 1969 when his debut novel Little Red Riding Hood, Beware won the 61st Akutagawa Prize. He followed it with I Can't Hear the Swan's Song, Farewell, Heroic Black Hood, and My Beloved Bluebeard, four novels that vividly captured the intellectual climate and emotional landscape of Japanese youth in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Celebrated for his wit, intellectual style, and sharp observations of society, Shoji remains one of the distinctive voices in postwar Japanese literature.
