Eiji Yoshikawa

Eiji Yoshikawa (born Hidetsugu Yoshikawa) was a Japanese historical novelist, born in Kanagawa Prefecture and raised in Yokohama. He left school young to help support his family, working on the Yokohama docks and later as a lacquerware apprentice, before turning to writing under nearly twenty pen names until settling on "Eiji Yoshikawa." He is best known for Musashi, a serialized retelling of the life of swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, and for Taiko, a condensed retelling of the life of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, along with New Tale of the Heike and an adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. In 1960 he received Japan's Cultural Order of Merit, its highest honor for a writer, and was also awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure and the Mainichi Art Award. He died in Tokyo in 1962.