Among the works of this period are Taiko and his re-telling of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.Īt the end of the war Eiji Yoshikawa stopped writing for a while and settled down to enjoy a quiet retirement in Yoshino (present-day Oumeshi) on the outskirts of Tokyo, but by 1947 he had started writing again. During the war he continued writing novels, and became more influenced by Chinese culture. At this time he divorced Yasu Akazawa and married Fumiko Ikedo. Upon the outbreak of war with China in 1937 the Asahi Shimbun sent him into the field as a special correspondent. But in 1935, with the serialization of Musashi, about famed swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, in the Asahi Shimbun, his writing settled firmly into the genre of historical adventure fiction. In the early 1930s, his writing became introspective, reflecting growing troubles in his personal life. He first used this pen name with the serialization of Sword Trouble, Woman Trouble. Eiji Yoshikawa used 19 pen names before settling on Eiji Yoshikawa. In the following years he published stories in various periodicals published by Kodansha, who recognized him as their number one author. His experiences in the earthquake strengthened his resolve to make writing his career.

He married in 1923, the year of the Great Kantō earthquake. He joined the newspaper Maiyu Shimbun in 1921, and in the following year he began publishing serializations, starting with Life of Shinran. In 1914, with The Tale of Enoshima, he won first prize in a novel-writing contest sponsored by the publisher Kodansha.

Yoshikawa eiji