幸田露伴

One of the towering figures of Meiji literature, often paired with Ozaki Koyo as a leading voice of the Ken'yusha era, he wrote in a richly classical style steeped in Edo culture, Buddhist thought, and Chinese learning. His fiction lingers on craftsmen, sculptors, and dreamers who pursue their art with almost spiritual devotion, as in the celebrated novella Furyubutsu and the unfinished masterwork Goju no To, where a humble carpenter stakes his life on building a five-story pagoda. Erudite, principled, and famously disciplined, he later turned to essays, history, and classical commentary, earning the first Order of Culture and shaping generations of writers, including his daughter, the essayist Aya.