AThe Annals

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Filter by category and discipline, then by continent, country and century of birth. Countries not yet represented can be drafted at the research desk.

Novelists, poets, philosophers, theologians, New Thought authors, historians and the students of language itself.

5 figures

Sei Shōnagon

966 – 1017

The Pillow Book invented the list-essay a millennium before the internet.

Japan·Literature

Murasaki Shikibu

973 – 1014

Wrote the world's first psychological novel, a thousand years ago.

Japan·LiteratureFull profile

Matsuo Bashō

1644 – 1694

Perfected haiku and the travel journal in The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

Japan·Literature

Yasunari Kawabata

1899 – 1972

First Japanese literature laureate; Snow Country and The Old Capital.

Japan·LiteratureNobel

Kenzaburō Ōe

1935 – 2023

Wrote disability, Hiroshima and postwar conscience.

Japan·LiteratureNobel