Kojima Nobuo
28 February: Born in Gifu Prefecture
Begins high school, and starts writing for private magazines.
Graduates from University of Tokyo, begins teaching middle-school English.
Drafted, sent to China with the Japanese Army.
Produces more than 30 volumes of criticism and translations from English to Japanese (esp. Saroyan and J.D. Salinger), as well as his own fiction.
Discharged from the army, reumes writing, teaching high school, and adjuncting at Universities.
Publishes "Amerikan sukuuru" ("American School"). It wins the Akutagawa Prize, Japan's most important literary award.
Travels to the U.S. on a Rockefeller Foundation grant to study American authors like Anderson, Faulkner and Saroyan.
Receives the first Tanizaki Jun'ichiro Prize for Hogo kazoku (Embracing Family), a novel which deals with post-war Japan.
Hogo kazoku (Embracing Family) is translated into English, the only one of his novels to be treated thus.
June: Has a stroke; is hospitalized
26 October: Dies of pneumonia.