Congratulations are in store as three Vertical authors were honored this year for their contributions to literature and culture! Adding to an already substantial list of award winners (including seven Naoki Awards, two Akutagawa Prizes and three Eisners) authors Joh Sasaki, Kenzo Kitakata, and Kaoru Kurimoto join Osamu Tezuka picking up prizes in 2009-2010.
This year the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Literature awarded Japan’s highest literary honor the Naoki Prize to Joh Sasaki for his latest book Asking the Ruin (Haikyo ni Kou). The author of Zero Over Berlin now joins an all-star cast of Vertical authors—Keigo Higashino, Kaori Ekuni, Hideo Okuda, Mariko Koike, Natsuhiko Kyogoku, Arimasa Osawa, Asa Nonami—to be recognized as one of the best scribes in Japan today.
Kenzo Kitakata was awarded the 13th Japan Prize for Mystery Literature. The award established by Japanese publisher Koubunsha honors Kitakata’s contributions to the development of mystery fiction. Selected by critics, fellow writers, and the press, Kitakata continues to be placed in high regard within the world of genre fiction.
On a more somber note, last December the Science Fiction Writers of Japan paid tribute to a legend in the field of fantasy and science-fiction when they honored the late Kaoru Kurimoto’s Guin Saga with the Japan SF Special Prize at the 2009 Japanese Science Fiction Awards. Kurimoto’s magnum opus has been a staple of fantasy fiction since the SF premiered in 1980 and has inspired a generation of authors and artists in the field worldwide with her larger-than-life characters and inspired narratives.
So while the rest of the world prepares for the Oscars to close out the award season, Vertical is polishing up its bronzes and making space for more awards to come.
Vertical’s president, editorial director and marketing director took a trip to Tokyo a couple weeks ago to celebrate the re-opening of their Japan-office, as well as to herald the recent Naoki Prize our author Keigo Higashino won. 
Kenjiro Haitani is the recipient of many awards for excellence in children fiction, including the Hans Christian Andersen Award. 
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Vertical Editorial Director Ioannis Mentzas accepts the S&R Washington Award, given annually to key members of the American arts worlds who have demonstrated an acute sense of the cross-cultural.
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