Novelist. Whilst attending high school he studied under Muroi Saisei and Akutagawa Ryunosuke. He entered the Imperial University of Tokyo in 1925 and started to write for magazines like Kobayashi Hideo's Yamamayu and Nakano Shigeharu's Roba. In 1930 he debuted in the literary world with a Raymond Radiguet style novel, Sei Kazoku (The Holy Family). He then studied the writings of Rainer Maria Rilke and Marcel Proust, and published Utsukushii Mura (Beautiful Village) (1933-34) and Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Has Risen) (1936-38). Around this time he became more familiar with Japanese classics and published Kagerou no Nikki (The Diary of Kagerou) (1937-39) as well as his masterpiece full-length novel Naoko (1941). In the post-war period he worked hard to revive the magazine Shiki (Four Seasons) and to publish the magazine Kogen (Highlands).