Born in Gyeongseong, Korea, in 1930, Hiroko Minagawa is a Japanese writer of mystery, fantasy, horror, and historical fiction. Her debut work was a children’s book called The Sea and the Cross (1972), and she won the Shosetsu Gendai New Writers Prize the following year with Arcadian Summer. She has won numerous literary awards including the  Mystery Writers of Japan Award (1985), the Naoki Prize (1986), the Shibata Renzaburo Prize (1990), Yoshikawa Eiji Prize for Literature (1998), and the  Honkaku Mystery Award (2012). In 2013 she received the Japan Mystery Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement.