Junichi Watanabe

Jun'ichi Watanabe (渡辺 淳一, Watanabe Jun'ichi, 24 October 1933 – 30 April 2014) was a Japanese writer. Jun'ichi Watanabe was born in Kamisunagawa, Hokkaido, Japan. His starting point as a literate was the death of a classmate who was his first love in high school. He published his first works while still studying at Sapporo Medical University, where he graduated in 1958. He specialised in orthopedic surgery, while at the same time writing medical, historical, and biographical novels. Following the scandal about the first heart transplant operation performed in Japan in 1968, which became known as the "Wada incident", Watanabe left his medical profession and concentrated on writing.Watanabe wrote more than 50 novels in total, and won awards including the 1970 Naoki Prize for Hikari to kage (lit. "Light and shadow"), and the Yoshikawa Eiji Prize in 1979 for Toki rakujitsu ("The Setting Sun in the Distance) and Nagasaki roshia yujokan ("The Russian brothel of Nagasaki"). He gained wide attention with a series of sexually explicit novels, including the 1997 bestseller A Lost Paradise, which was made into a film and a TV miniseries.He died on 30 April 2014 of prostate cancer in Tokyo.