Japanese Government honours Sir Kazuo Ishiguro OBE
2018/9/17
On Wednesday 12 September 2018, Ambassador Tsuruoka bestowed the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star upon Sir Kazuo Ishiguro OBE in recognition of his outstanding contribution to literature and the promotion of deeper mutual understanding between the UK and Japan.
Sir Kazuo published his debut work, A Pale View of Hills, in 1982, for which he won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. His next novel, An Artist of the Floating World, followed four years later and won the Whitbread Book of the Year. Both of these novels take the reader on fascinating journeys into the minds of their Japanese protagonists.
He won the prestigious Booker Prize for his third novel, The Remains of the Day, which firmly established his reputations a distinguished writer. After his novel When We Were Orphans became a bestseller, he published several other works, including Never Let Me Go, which captured the hearts and minds of millions of readers worldwide.
Sir Kazuo’s achievements as a novelist have been highly recognised not only in the UK but all around the world. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017 and was awarded a knighthood for services to literature in the Queen’s Birthday Honours earlier this year.
In his speech, Ambassador Tsuruoka paid tribute to Sir Kazuo on his illustrious career. In expressing his appreciation for this honour, Sir Kazuo stated that ever since arriving in the UK in 1960, as a boy of five, the wish to build a strong and lasting friendship between Japan and Britain had been a personal project for him and one of the great satisfactions of his life has been to see that the shadow cast by the Second World War and the bitter memories of that era grow smaller and smaller to the point, particularly for the younger generation it doesn’t exist at all.
Sir Kazuo published his debut work, A Pale View of Hills, in 1982, for which he won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. His next novel, An Artist of the Floating World, followed four years later and won the Whitbread Book of the Year. Both of these novels take the reader on fascinating journeys into the minds of their Japanese protagonists.He won the prestigious Booker Prize for his third novel, The Remains of the Day, which firmly established his reputations a distinguished writer. After his novel When We Were Orphans became a bestseller, he published several other works, including Never Let Me Go, which captured the hearts and minds of millions of readers worldwide.
Sir Kazuo’s achievements as a novelist have been highly recognised not only in the UK but all around the world. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017 and was awarded a knighthood for services to literature in the Queen’s Birthday Honours earlier this year.
In his speech, Ambassador Tsuruoka paid tribute to Sir Kazuo on his illustrious career. In expressing his appreciation for this honour, Sir Kazuo stated that ever since arriving in the UK in 1960, as a boy of five, the wish to build a strong and lasting friendship between Japan and Britain had been a personal project for him and one of the great satisfactions of his life has been to see that the shadow cast by the Second World War and the bitter memories of that era grow smaller and smaller to the point, particularly for the younger generation it doesn’t exist at all.
The Embassy of Japan