Born in
Kyoto, Watanabe grew up between
Kumamoto and the Chinese city of
Dalian. He graduated in sociology at the
Hosei University in
Tokyo and in 1965 he founded the literary magazine
Kumamoto Fudoki, in which
Michiko Ishimure first published the novel
Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow in a
serialized format. His best-known work is
Remnants of Days Past (逝きし世の面影; Yukishi yo no omokage), a look at the
Edo period from the perspective of how modernization actually worsened the quality of people's lives. During his career Watanabe received various awards and honors, notably the
Mainichi Publishing Culture Award in 1979 and the
Yomiuri Prize in the "criticism and biography" category in 2006. On 25 December 2022, Watanabe died at his home in Kumamoto, at the age of 92. ==References==