[2] Born in Tokyo, he accompanied his parents to Korea, when the country was still under Japanese colonial rule.
After the war, he returned to Japan, graduating from the University of Tokyo and joining the staff of the Yomiuri Shimbun, a leading Japanese newspaper in 1952.
He served as a foreign correspondent in South Korea and Vietnam before becoming a novelist.
Though he is often described as an environmentalist author, the focus of much of his fiction is the urban physical environment.
His novel Yume no Shima has been translated into English by Charles de Wolf as Isle of Dreams, and into German by Jaqueline Berndt and Hiroshi Yamane as Trauminsel; a short story, Bokushikan, has been translated into English by Charles de Wolf as The Rectory; another short story, Hashigo no tatsu machi 梯の立つ街, has been translated by Lawrence Rogers as "Jacob's Tokyo Ladder" and printed in 2002's Tokyo stories: a literary stroll.