The prize was founded in 1949 by the Yomiuri Shimbun Company to help form a "strong cultural nation".
The winner is awarded two million Japanese yen and an inkstone.
For the first two years, awards were granted in four categories: novels and plays, poetry, literary criticism, and scholarly studies.
This was further reorganized in 1966 to form six categories: novels, plays, essays and travel journals, criticism and biography, poetry, and academic studies and translation.
The Yomiuri Shimbun maintains an official list of current and past prize recipients.