Biography
Haniya was born in Taiwan, then a Japanese colony, to a Samurai family named Hannya after the Hannya Shingyo (Heart Sutra). He had a sickly childhood and suffered from tuberculosis in his teens. Although originally interested in anarchism, in 1931 he joined the Japanese Communist Party, became its Agriculture Director the following year, and was promptly arrested. While in the prison's hospital, he devoted himself to studying Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
After World War II, Haniya founded a little magazine entitled Kindai Bungaku (Modern Literature) which became very influential. In this role he discovered and published Kōbō Abe, who subsequently joined Haniya's avant-garde group Yoru no Kai (Night Group).
Haniya was a prolific writer; after his death, Kodansha published his complete works in a set of 19 volumes. He won the Tanizaki Prize in 1970 for his collection Black Horses in the Darkness and other stories.
Read more about this topic: Yutaka Haniya
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