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Roman Rosenbaum, of the University of Sydney, has been awarded the second Inoue Yasushi Award at a ceremony held at the Japan Foundation on 6 June.

The award was founded by the Inoue Yasushi Memorial Culture Foundation, and established at the University of Sydney in 2006, to encourage Australian researchers, scholars and PhD students who are studying Japanese culture and literature. It is awarded annually for the best refereed journal article or book chapter on Japanese literature to have been published during the previous year by a researcher based in Australia. The inaugural award in 2007 was won by Dr Tomoko Aoyama of the University of Queensland.

Mr Rosenbaum received this year’s award for his article The ‘Generation of the Burnt-out Ruins’, which was published in Japanese Studies, Vol. 27, No. 3 in December 2007. In his article, Mr Rosenbaum presented an overview of the yakeato generation – that of the children in Japan who were orphaned as a result of WWII – who numbered 123,000 by the end of the war in 1945; discussing their background and relevance in today’s society. Japanese Studies is a fully refereed journal published three times each year by the Japanese Studies Association of Australia (JSAA).

The award’s namesake, Yasushi Inoue, was one of Japan’ s most popular and prolific writers; his style combining literary art with entertainment. A winner of the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1950, his work was described by one critic as ‘the gust of a refreshing breeze sent to the wasted and wearied world of sentiment after the war’. For the next forty years until his death in 1991, Inoue wrote both lengthy novels and short stories, from exciting love stories to historical sagas.

The award ceremony was held at The Japan Foundation, Sydney on 6 June. Speeches were heard from Mr Rosenbaum and from Yasushi Inoue’s son, Mr Takuya Inoue, who opened the event. The award presentation and speeches were followed by a screening of the Japanese film Furin Kazan ( “Samurai Banners”), based on Inoue’s 1955 novel of the same title.

The ceremony was sponsored by the University of Sydney, and co-sponsored by The Japan Foundation, Sydney, in conjunction with the Australia–Japan Society of NSW and the Japanese Society of Sydney.

photo: Nichigo Press 2008