Author Yang Yi (pictured) won the Akutagawa Prize on July 15 to become the first Chinese to receive the prestigious literary award.

Yang Yi KYODO PHOTO

The 44-year-old Yang's award-winning work Tokiga nijimu asa ("A Morning when Time Blurs"), is set during and after China's democratization movement centering on the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

It follows a Chinese man who lives through those times and later moves to Japan, holding on to his ideals.

Meanwhile, the Naoki Prize, a major literature award for popular fiction, went to Areno Inoue, 47, daughter of the late novelist Yasushi Inoue.

Inoue's Kiriha e ("To the Mine Face") is a love story about a teacher who lives with her husband on a remote island.