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Otohiko Kaga (1929-), is a psychiatrist specializing in prison psychosis and criminology. After graduating from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Tokyo, he worked in Japanese hospitals and prisons before taking up further studies in France. His writing debut came in 1967 with the long novel Furandoru no fuyu (Winter in Flanders).
"""The result of Kaga's effort is a sprawling indictment of modern society's modes of organizing bodies and labor...Here's where the novel's length works well, as the repetition of experiences with institutionalization becomes analogous to the repetitive nature of the experiences themselves. Kaga's examination of the lives of dozens of prisoners, characters both major and minor in his sweeping drama, is some of the most powerful and compassionate writing of the novel. His criticism of the criminal justice system of mid-century Japan could just as well have been written about the United States today, and Anglophone readers interested in the subject will find Kaga's work here highly rewarding, though it is quite divorced from the racial conditions that underlie the prison-industrial complex in the United States...Readers interested in a brilliant, high-definition portrait of postwar Japan will find little to compare to this that is readily available in the English language."" --Jack Rockwell, Words Without Borders"
