[1][2][3] Yasuoka was born in pre-war Japan in Kōchi, Kōchi, but as the son of a veterinary corpsman in the Imperial Army, he spent most of his youth moving from one military post to another.

[1] After the war, he became ill with spinal caries, and it was "while he was bedridden with this disease that he began his writing career.

[3] As an influential Japanese writer, Yasuoka's work has won him various prizes and awards.

Notably, he received the Akutagawa Prize for Inki na tanoshimi (A Melancholy Pleasure, 1953) and Warui nakama (Bad Company, 1953); Kaihen no kōkei (A View by the Sea, 1959) won him the Noma Literary Prize; and his Maku ga orite kara (After the Curtain Fell, 1967) won the Mainichi Cultural Prize.

[1] He also received the Yomiuri Literary Prize for Hate mo nai dōchūki (The Never-ending Traveler's Journal, 1996); and the Osaragi Jirō Prize for Kagamigawa (The Kagami River, 2000).