James Kirkup

Sue Sumii was a Japanese writer and campaigner whose seven-volume saga The River With No Bridge portrayed the lives of burakumin, a community subjected to centuries of discrimination. Drawing on her own observations and commitment to social equality, she chronicled the rise of the Suiheisha liberation movement and challenged prejudice based on ancestry, gender and class. The hugely successful work sold more than eight million copies, was adapted for film and translated into English. Sumii also supported pacifist and anti-discrimination causes, using her royalties to establish cultural and educational facilities and assisting the Buraku Liberation League.

Shintaro Katsu was a Japanese actor whose portrayal of the blind swordsman Zatoichi made him a cultural icon across Japan and Southeast Asia and helped revitalize the period sword-fighting genre. Beginning in kabuki and film, he expanded into directing and production through Katsu Productions, while also appearing in major works such as Kagemusha. His career was marked by financial difficulties, drug arrests, scandals and a serious on-set accident involving his son, but he retained public affection and continued performing until shortly before his death from hypopharyngeal cancer in Japan on 21 June 1997.

Portuguese poet Al Berto, born Alberto Raposo Pidwell Tavares in Sines in 1948, pursued art and photography before exile in Brussels during the Angolan independence war and Salazar dictatorship. He returned to Portugal after the Carnation Revolution and divided his time between Lisbon and Sines. His poetry, especially the prize-winning O Medo, is characterized by refined anguish, fragility, mystical concern with signs and omens, and an awareness of mortality. Already suffering from terminal cancer when he performed in Paris, he published his final book, Horto de incendio, shortly before dying on 13 June 1997.

Maurice Roche, the unconventional French writer born in Clermont-Ferrand on 2 November 1924 and deceased in Sèvres on 19 July 1997, spent his career mocking mortality through black humour, experimental prose and musical work. After journalism and early literary ventures, he published Monteverdi and gained recognition with Compact, whose formal freedom and typographical experimentation distinguished him from both the Tel Quel group and the nouveau roman. Works including Circus, Codex, Opera bouffe, Macabre, Testament and Maladie Melodie combined fragments, wordplay and grotesque meditations on illness, medicine and death. Though often uncomfortable for readers and difficult to translate, Roche is remembered as an original, serious and darkly comic writer.

Kunihiko Kodaira, who died on 26 July 1997 aged 82, was Japan's first Fields Medalist and a leading figure in 20th-century mathematics. Educated at Tokyo University, he later taught at Princeton, Harvard and Stanford before returning to Japan, where he held senior academic posts and received major national honors. His groundbreaking work in algebraic geometry, complex analysis and related fields helped establish Japan as a world leader and influenced mathematicians including Goro Shimura, Yutaka Taniyama, Shigefumi Mori and Heisuke Hironaka. The obituary also highlights his role in editing the Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Mathematics, his musical talent and his criticism of Japan's increasingly standardized education system.

Dionys Mascolo, a largely self-educated son of Italian immigrants, was a French writer, intellectual and political activist whose life combined literary work with sustained opposition to authority, imperialism and war. He had a long intellectual and personal relationship with Marguerite Duras, participated in the Resistance during the Occupation, helped secure Robert Antelme's release from Dachau, and worked at Gallimard. Initially a member of the French Communist Party, Mascolo became disillusioned after Stalinist purges and was condemned as a revisionist. He later opposed the Algerian War, helped inspire the Manifesto of the 121 and resisted Charles de Gaulle's return to power. His later years focused on philosophy and political thought, although he published relatively little.

Koi Nagata, Japan’s oldest active haiku poet, survived the Kobe earthquake after his house collapsed around him and later wrote the collection Jijin about the experience. The obituary describes his eight-decade engagement with haiku, his founding of the Rila-za group and magazine, and his distinctive Zen-influenced style focused on loneliness, decay and mortality. Nagata criticized the declining philosophical and artistic standards of modern haiku and rejected the power struggles and material ambitions of its practitioners. His death is presented as symbolic of the broader aging and decline of Japan’s haiku movement.

Georges Guetary, born Lambros Worloou to Greek parents in Alexandria, became a celebrated French singer, dancer and actor after abandoning commercial studies for music in Paris. Discovered by Mistinguett in 1937, he rose from her chorus to leading roles in major operettas, toured during the Second World War, and built successful careers in France, London, Broadway and Hollywood, including a performance with Gene Kelly in An American in Paris. Known for his Mediterranean voice, romantic stage persona and millions-selling recordings, he continued performing into old age. A farewell concert at 80 demonstrated that his charm and vocal presence remained intact, sustained by discipline, humour and an ability not to take his operetta roles too seriously.

Yuji Aida, a Kyoto-born scholar, writer, journalist, and longtime Kyoto University humanities professor, died in 1997. Known for his eloquence and the distinctive “Aida-bushi” style, he fiercely attacked bureaucracy, cultural superficiality, educational standardization, postwar left-wing rhetoric, and declining human values. His influential but abrasive work made him widely read and widely disliked. Aida’s memoir of two years in a Burmese prisoner-of-war camp, Prisoner of the British, criticized both British conduct and Japanese wartime leaders, provoking controversy in Britain and Japan. His career included studies of Renaissance art, Michelangelo, Japanese identity, and the history of human intellect. He was buried in a private ceremony attended by his family and close friends, with coffee beans placed on his coffin in tribute to his fondness for coffee.

Shoichi Yokoi, a Japanese Army sergeant and tailor, survived for 28 years in the jungles of Guam after Japan’s defeat in World War II, unaware that the war had ended. Repatriated in 1972, he became a national hero, married Mihoko, lectured widely, advocated austerity and environmental responsibility, and unsuccessfully stood for election on an anti-corruption platform. He later wrote a bestselling memoir, made pottery and calligraphy, and suffered serious illnesses before dying of heart failure in Japan in 1997 at age 82.

Gumpei Yokoi, the Japanese electrical engineer and inventor behind Nintendo products including Ultrahand, Game and Watch, Famicom and Game Boy, died in a car crash in 1997 aged 56. After joining Nintendo as a maintenance engineer, he transformed spare-time toy-making into a highly successful career, helping the small Kyoto company become a global games business. His inventions generated enormous sales and helped clear Nintendo's substantial debts. Yokoi later left voluntarily after 30 years to establish the small, creativity-focused company Koto, despite reports linking his departure to the unsuccessful Virtual Boy.

Paul Guth, the French writer and journalist, was born in 1910 and died in 1997. Educated at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and the Faculté des Lettres de Paris, he taught literature and classics before becoming a full-time writer. His first major book, a diary of Robert Bresson’s production of Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne during the Occupation and Liberation of Paris, was acclaimed as a masterpiece. Guth later became widely popular for humorous books featuring his fictional “naïf,” an apparently innocent character used to satirize modern life. He also wrote literary criticism and histories, contributed regularly to Le Figaro, and received numerous prizes and distinctions, although the Académie Française repeatedly declined to admit him.

Alba De Cespedes is remembered as an influential Italian-Cuban novelist, journalist, poet, screenwriter and feminist who challenged male supremacy, traditional family roles and social expectations imposed on women. Imprisoned by Mussolini for anti-Fascist activities, she combined political idealism with controlled, observant literary craftsmanship. Her internationally recognized novel Forbidden Diary examined the constraints facing wives and mothers, while her journalism, literary magazine Il Mercurio, poetry, theatre and film work extended her influence. After settling in Paris in the late 1950s, she remained an admired figure in literary and cinematic circles until her death on 14 November 1997.

The obituary traces French singer and songwriter Barbara's career from classical vocal training and years of obscurity in Brussels nightclubs to national fame as “La Dame en Noir.” It highlights her theatrical performances, distinctive breath-controlled voice, dark and emotionally intense repertoire, and close relationship with her audience. Barbara’s left-wing activism included support for AIDS victims, children facing slavery, anti-racism, gender equality and immigrants. Admired by François Mitterrand and associated with prominent left-wing artists, she gradually withdrew from public performance, but her recordings—including her 1996 album Barbara—continued to achieve major commercial success.

Leon Poliakov, born in St Petersburg in 1910 and deceased in Paris in 1997, devoted his career to documenting the history and origins of anti-Semitism. After moving to Paris, publishing an anti-Hitler newspaper, and serving in the Resistance, he co-founded the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine and helped preserve records of the Holocaust. His research, including the influential Le Bréviaire de la haine and five-volume Histoire de l'antisémitisme, established him as a leading authority; he also worked with Gestapo archives and the Nuremberg trials and served as a CNRS research director. The obituary places his death amid renewed disputes in France over Holocaust remembrance, the treatment of deportation records, Maurice Papon's trial, Holocaust education and Jean-Marie Le Pen's revisionist rhetoric, underscoring the continuing importance of Poliakov's work.

Claude Roy, born in Paris in 1915 and deceased there in 1997, was a French writer known for poetry, children’s books, autobiography, travel writing and art criticism. His work reflected a lifelong sense of wonder, shaped by friendships with artists including Picasso and Balthus. After escaping German captivity during World War II, he joined the Resistance and later entered Bergen-Belsen with the British Army, experiences that affected his outlook. He briefly joined the Communist Party but rejected Stalinism. Despite producing a large and distinguished body of work, he received relatively limited literary recognition. His vitality and creativity continued through cancer and serious illness until his death.

Masaru Ibuka, co-founder of Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo—later Sony Corporation—died in Tokyo in 1997 after a career spanning engineering, industrial leadership and education advocacy. The obituary credits his inventive intuition and talent for attracting gifted collaborators, especially Akio Morita, with helping build Sony from a small 36-person postwar venture into a global electronics company. It highlights the development of Japan’s first tape recorder, transistor radios, the Trinitron television system, the Walkman and compact discs, alongside failed products such as Betamax. Ibuka is remembered as an imaginative, humane industrialist whose influence extended into early-childhood education and Japanese business culture.

Juzo Itami, born Yoshihiro Ikeuchi in Kyoto in 1933, was an actor, essayist and filmmaker whose rebellious nature and sharp social satire made him a major figure in Japanese cinema. After an acting career, he achieved success directing films such as Funeral, Tampopo, A Taxing Woman, Good Luck Girl, Minbo no onna, The Great Patient and Supermarket Woman, tackling Japanese social conventions, food culture, taxation, crime, illness and commercial malpractice. His criticism of the yakuza led to a serious knife attack, while later political and media hostility brought further pressure. After denying allegations about his sex life, Itami died by suicide in Tokyo on 20 December 1997.

Giorgio Strehler, who died in Lugano on 25 December 1997, is remembered as a major European theatre director and the founder of Milan's Piccolo Teatro. Drawing on his multilingual Triestine background and socialist commitments, he developed an eclectic, actor-focused style and directed influential productions of works by Goldoni, Brecht, Shakespeare, Chekhov, Verdi and others. His career included periods of political engagement, exile and experimentation, as well as major work in Paris and at La Scala. Despite controversies involving cocaine-possession and alleged misuse of European funds, which he denied, Strehler remained internationally respected and was preparing new Goldoni and Mozart projects when he died.

Toshiro Mifune, born in Manchuria in 1920, became Japan’s most internationally recognised film actor after Akira Kurosawa discovered him at Toho. Their collaborations included Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, Yojimbo and Red Beard, while Mifune also worked with Kenji Mizoguchi and numerous foreign directors. Celebrated for his athletic intensity, expressive speed and commanding samurai roles, he made about 130 films and later established a production company and television career. His professional relationship with Kurosawa ended after disagreements, and his later years were affected by illness and Alzheimer’s disease. He died in Tokyo on 24 December 1997.

Shin'ichiro Nakamura, who died in Atami on 25 December 1997 aged 79, was a remarkably versatile Japanese writer whose work included novels, poetry, translation, criticism, biography, screenwriting and painting. The obituary praises his expansive, introspective fiction, shaped by European modernism, Heian and Edo-period culture, Buddhism and explorations of consciousness. Despite producing major novel cycles and literary studies, he remained almost unknown outside Japan because little of his work had been translated, leaving him overlooked by the Nobel Prize Committee. The modest, commercially unconcerned writer also scripted the 1961 monster film Mothra and requested an anonymous, nationality-free disposition after his death.

Kenichi Fukui, the Japanese chemist who shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Roald Hoffmann, developed frontier orbital theory to predict the course of pericyclic organic reactions using quantum mechanics. Despite the significance of his work and its adoption by pharmaceutical companies, Fukui remained a private and modest scholar, pursuing a quiet life at Kyoto University and later leading Kyoto scientific institutions. He also encouraged children to observe nature, respect living things and protect the environment.

Maria Judite de Carvalho, who died in Lisbon in 1998, is remembered as a major Portuguese novelist and short-story writer whose restrained, unsentimental style explored loneliness, failed relationships and the darker side of existence. Compared with Anita Brookner and influenced by Françoise Sagan and Dominique Rolin, Carvalho drew on her experiences in Portugal, France and Belgium, as well as her work as a painter. Her second novel won the Premio Camilo Castelo Branco, while her short stories and Lisbon chronicles were especially acclaimed. Despite substantial recognition in France through Éditions de la Différence, her work was never published by a British publisher.

Shin'ichi Hoshi was a pioneering and exceptionally prolific Japanese science-fiction writer who produced 1,000 stories and helped popularize the genre in Japan. Known for concise stories, black humor, surprise endings and sharp criticism of modern consumer society, he achieved international recognition and was translated into ten languages. His works included Bokko-chan, Delusion Bank and The Voice Net, the latter anticipating concerns about networked computers controlling human life. The article also describes his family background, his father’s bankruptcy after government interference, his literary honors and his declining health before his death in Tokyo on 30 December 1997.

Ernst Junger is remembered as a major, stylistically distinctive German writer whose work drew on war, travel, nature, science, time and metaphysical speculation. A decorated First World War veteran, he transformed his frontline experiences into Storm of Steel, later producing influential novels and journals including On the Marble Cliffs, Heliopolis and The Worker. His relationship with the revolutionary right and German nationalism remained controversial, but he rejected Nazi honours, opposed Hitlerism, was indirectly linked to the Stauffenberg resistance and was himself investigated by the Nazi authorities. The obituary emphasizes both the complexity of his politics and the enduring literary power of his work.

Catherine Sauvage was a French chanson singer and actress known for intensely personal interpretations of poetry and politically charged songs. Influenced by artists including Léo Ferré and Bertolt Brecht, she performed works by major poets and supported anarchist, anti-war and student movements, including signing the Manifesto of the 121 against the Algerian War. Her career included cabaret, theatre, radio and acclaimed recordings, though she gradually withdrew from public life as popular music changed. She died in Bry-sur-Marne on 20 March 1998, shortly after the release of a double album celebrating her interpretations of poets.

Alain Bosquet, born Anatole Bisk in Odessa in 1919 to a multilingual Alsatian-Belgian and German-Jewish family, became a cosmopolitan French poet, novelist, translator and critic. After studying in Brussels, serving with the Belgian, French and American forces during World War II, and witnessing the liberation of Buchenwald, he built an international literary career in New York, Germany and Paris. He edited literary reviews, worked with Albert Camus, taught in the United States and France, and contributed to major French publications. The author of more than twenty poetry collections, Bosquet won several major awards, including the Prix Goncourt de la Poésie, and was finally naturalised as a French citizen in 1980. He died in Paris on 17 March 1998, aged 78.

Thomas Narcejac, born Pierre Ayraud in Rochefort-sur-Mer in 1908, is remembered for his influential partnership with Pierre Boileau, which produced 43 novels, around 100 short stories and four plays. Narcejac supplied the literary and philosophical dimension while Boileau devised their intricate plots, together developing a distinctly French form of suspense fiction in response to American thriller writers. Their novels inspired major films including Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Diaboliques and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. After Boileau's death in 1989, Narcejac continued writing increasingly individual works before spending his final years fly fishing. He died in Nice on 10 June 1998.

Jean Mercure and his wife, actress and poetry performer Aline Jeannerot, known as Jandeline, maintained a six-decade personal and artistic partnership in French theatre. Mercure moved from journalism into acting, directing, playwriting and production, served with the Free French Forces during the Second World War, and staged a wide range of adaptations and international productions. His most significant institutional achievement was transforming Paris’s Sarah Bernhardt Theatre into the modern Théâtre de la Ville, using affordable early-evening performances to broaden access to high-quality theatre, music and dance. The couple continued performing together after Mercure’s 1985 retirement and died by voluntary suicide together in Paris on 24 June 1998.

Nino Ferrer is remembered as a gifted but restless Italian-French singer, composer and painter who resented the lightweight hits that made him famous, including “Mirza” and “Le Telefon.” Drawn to jazz, blues, rock and increasingly experimental work, he repeatedly changed styles, moved between France and Italy, and pursued albums, films and artistic projects that attracted less commercial success. Fiercely anti-militarist and opposed to nuclear power, he later withdrew to rural southern France, where he focused on his family, animals and painting. Following the death of his mother, Ferrer died by suicide near Saint-Cyprien in August 1998. The obituary sharply criticizes the superficial television tribute that followed, while emphasizing his dignity, irony and lasting artistic individuality.

Julien Green, born in Paris to American parents, was a French-language writer who retained a strong sense of American identity and became the first person of American descent elected to the Académie Française. His life and fiction were shaped by a persistent tension between intense religious faith, sexual desire, chastity and guilt. The obituary traces his wartime service, conversion from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism, Southern literary heritage and major novels, while emphasizing that his enduring achievement was his vast, candid journals covering seven decades. Green opposed the death penalty, supported total pacifism and remained politically independent. He died in Paris in 1998, with arrangements made privately to avoid public ceremony, and had previously resigned from the Académie Française after declaring that he considered himself exclusively American.

Elena Garro, a major Mexican novelist, playwright, journalist and social activist, died in Cuernavaca on 22 August 1998. Formerly married to poet Octavio Paz, she remained embroiled in a bitter inheritance dispute after his death despite acknowledging that her love for him had endured. Garro's acclaimed works included Los Recuerdos del Porvenir, which won the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize, and Memoria de España 1937. She advocated for impoverished campesinos but was accused, a charge she rejected, of instigating the 1968 Tlatelolco student revolt, leading to years of exile in Europe and Japan. She returned to Mexico in 1994 with her daughter Helena and continued writing and contesting Paz's estate while suffering severe breathing problems.

John Littleton, born in Louisiana in 1930, became a celebrated gospel and opera singer after settling in France following his military service. Trained at the Conservatoire National de Paris, he achieved success in major operatic roles before developing a prominent career interpreting Black American spiritual music. His recordings sold millions, and he received numerous honors, including the Prix Mahalia Jackson, the Grand Prix du Disque Charles Cros and the Legion of Honour. He died in Reims on 24 August 1998.

Ryuichi Tamura (1923–1998) was a leading member of Japan’s postwar Arechi poetry group, which drew on T.S. Eliot, existentialism and contemporary Western literature after wartime censorship had restricted foreign influence. The obituary traces his military service, publishing and teaching career, later association with Rekitei, poetry collections, critical essays and translations. It characterizes his poetry as crisis-oriented, innovative and satirically humorous, highlighting his poem “Emperor” as an example of his challenging and distinctive style.

Roger Vivier, born in Paris in 1903, became one of the twentieth century's most innovative French shoemakers after beginning as an apprentice. He established his own Paris atelier in 1937, worked with major fashion houses including Dior and Yves Saint Laurent, and helped popularize elegantly engineered high stiletto heels after the Second World War. His clients included leading film and theatre stars, royalty and Imelda Marcos, while his designs ranged from crystal slippers and sculptural sandals to Queen Elizabeth II's garnet-studded coronation shoes. Although his work was celebrated in museums and a major 1987 exhibition, Vivier remained modest and continued sketching until his death in Toulouse in 1998.

Ineko Sata, born in Nagasaki in 1904, rose from poverty and factory and restaurant work to become a major Japanese realist writer and pioneering advocate of women's liberation. Encouraged by writers including Akutagawa Ryunosuke and Yasunari Kawabata, she wrote about working people, immigrant Korean laborers, political repression and her own experiences of poverty, imprisonment and wartime Japan. Her involvement with the Japan Communist Party led to repeated conflict and expulsions, as she rejected Stalinism and maintained independent views. Sata received major literary honors, including the Noma Prize, Kawabata Prize and Asahi Prize, while continuing to criticize nationalism and acknowledge her wartime responsibility. She died in Tokyo on 12 October 1998.

Germán List Arzubide, a Mexican revolutionary, poet and writer, fought alongside Emiliano Zapata during the 1910–20 Mexican Revolution and survived repeated wounds and imprisonment. His poetry celebrated Zapata and the peasant cause, while his prose—including El movimiento estridentista—helped define Mexico’s Estridentist literary movement, which embraced modern technology from a Marxist perspective. The obituary places his work within broader Latin American literary efforts to break with the past and contrasts historical and literary accounts of the revolution with Marlon Brando’s fictionalized portrayal in Viva Zapata!. List died in Mexico City on 19 October 1998, aged 100.

Paul Misraki, born Paul Misrachi in Constantinople in 1908, became a central figure in French popular music as pianist, arranger and songwriter for Ray Ventura et ses Collegiens. His witty songs combined comic performances with understated warnings about France's economic and political crises before the Second World War. As a Jewish musician, he fled the Occupation for the unoccupied southern zone and later spent two years in Argentina and Brazil. He subsequently composed music for numerous French and international films, including works by Jacques Becker, Luis Buñuel, Jean-Pierre Melville, Orson Welles and Jean-Luc Godard. Misraki wrote 183 songs and 145 film scores, as well as books and novels, and received the Académie Française's Grand Prix for his autobiography. He died in Paris on 30 October 1998.

Jean Marais is remembered as a major French stage and screen actor whose athleticism, striking presence and willingness to perform his own stunts made him a star of adventure and period films. His most distinguished work came through his long artistic and personal association with Jean Cocteau, including La Belle et la Bete, Orphee and L'Eternel Retour. The obituary also recounts Marais's troubled family background, his relationships, his openness about his sexuality, his wartime confrontation with collaborationist critic Alain Laubreaux, and his later work as an artist. He died in Cannes on 8 November 1998, aged 84, leaving a legacy shaped by both popular spectacle and serious theatrical and cinematic achievement.

Nagaharu Yodogawa, who died in Tokyo in 1998 aged 89, was a beloved Japanese film critic, broadcaster and writer whose career spanned silent cinema, radio, television and print. Raised in Kobe and exposed to films from early childhood, he became a passionate advocate of foreign and silent movies, a respected critic, and a familiar television personality known for his triple farewell, “Sayonara, sayonara, sayonara.” He supported challenging cinematic themes, criticized modern Japanese filmmaking, praised Takeshi Kitano and defended his friend Akira Kurosawa. Despite declining health, he continued attending screenings in a wheelchair until shortly before his death.

Jean Malaquais, born Wladimir Malacki in Warsaw in 1908, became a self-taught French writer after years of itinerant labor among migrant workers in France. His autobiographical novel Les Javanais won the 1939 Prix Renaudot and received praise from André Gide and Leon Trotsky, but his literary reputation later declined. During World War II, he escaped Nazi captivity, crossed the Pyrenees with help from Varian Fry and others, and reached Venezuela. He subsequently lived and wrote in the United States and Geneva, producing novels, essays, plays, memoirs and a major study of Kierkegaard. A new edition of Les Javanais helped restore attention to his neglected work before his death in Geneva on 22 December 1998.

Goro Yamaguchi, one of the great modern masters of Japan's shakuhachi bamboo flute, was born into a family of traditional musicians and began performing publicly at 13. The obituary explains the instrument's construction, history and roots in Zen Buddhist practice, as well as its later use in contemporary classical music, jazz and film. Yamaguchi's 1968 album “A Bell Ringing in Empty Sky” introduced shakuhachi repertoire to a broad Western audience, with excerpts later sent into space aboard NASA's Voyager 2. Named a living national treasure in 1992, he also became an influential teacher in Japan and the United States. He died in Tokyo on 3 January 1999, and his funeral was held at Zenkoji Temple.

Gonzalo Torrente Ballester is remembered as a major but internationally underrecognized Spanish writer whose imaginative, linguistically inventive fiction drew heavily on Galicia, maritime history, mythology and philosophical irony. His 1943 debut, Javier Marino, was ignored and suppressed by Francoist censors because of its experimental style, political tensions and allegedly lascivious imagery. After teaching, facing exclusion from academia for condemning police repression, and working in the United States, he achieved broad recognition with the comic fantasy Saga/Fuga de J.B. and later novels including Dafne y ensueños and La isla de los jacintos cortados. His work is presented as a distinctive fusion of fantasy, erudition, satire and regional culture, admired by figures such as Jorge Luis Borges but still lacking substantial English translation at the time of his death in Salamanca on 27 January 1999.

Keisuke Kinoshita is remembered as one of Japan's greatest film directors, admired for his idealism, broad stylistic range and sensitive portrayals of women. The obituary traces his path from a childhood fascination with cinema and work in photography to Shochiku, wartime propaganda scripting and his directing debut in 1943. It highlights films including Twenty-four Eyes, Carmen Comes Home and especially Ballad of Narayama, whose blend of Kabuki techniques, lyrical imagery and emotional force is described as his enduring masterpiece. Although Kinoshita later moved into television and produced fewer memorable films after returning to cinema, the article argues that his work merits renewed international retrospective attention.

Stanley Kubrick is remembered as an obsessive, secretive perfectionist who maintained unusual artistic control and independence from Hollywood studios. The obituary traces his career from photography and low-budget films through major works including Lolita, Dr Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and Full Metal Jacket, emphasizing his recurring explorations of violence, war, sexuality, technology and human brutality. It also discusses controversies surrounding Lolita and A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick's retreat from public life in England, and the anticipation surrounding Eyes Wide Shut, released posthumously after his death in 1999.

Hideo Itokawa was a pioneering Japanese aeronautical engineer who helped design the Hayabusa fighter during World War II but opposed the use of kamikaze pilots. After Japan's aircraft industry was dismantled following the war, he worked on medical machinery before turning his attention to space exploration. He developed Japan's first solid-fuel rockets, led the Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science, and supervised the Osumi satellite launch, which made Japan the fourth country capable of launching satellites. Itokawa was also an accomplished cellist and violinist who began ballet lessons at age 60 and later performed in Romeo and Juliet.

Jean Guitton, who died in Paris aged 97, was a French Christian philosopher, writer, painter, novelist and journalist whose work sought to reconcile Catholic faith with modern science and history. A professor at the Sorbonne and the first layman invited to address the Second Vatican Council, he maintained friendships with figures including Henri Bergson, Albert Camus and Pope Paul VI. He advocated ecumenism but criticized the post-conciliar Catholic Church for weakening mystical elements of liturgy and sympathized with traditionalists such as Archbishop Lefebvre. His philosophical writings, teaching, art and relationships with major political and intellectual figures secured his place as a prominent French cultural figure.

Claude Manceron, a French historian and writer who contracted poliomyelitis at age 11, overcame the loss of formal education to become a prolific scholar, teacher and literary historian. Inspired by Jules Michelet and Abel Gance's film Napoleon, he wrote successful historical novels, biographies and major works on Napoleon and the French Revolution. His unfinished six-volume Les Hommes de la liberté reconstructed the Revolution through the voices of historical figures, while his biographical dictionary covered 500 revolutionary personalities. Manceron also served until 1995 as a close friend and adviser to François Mitterrand, and is remembered for combining scholarship, imagination and a triumphant response to adversity.

José Pierre, who died in Paris on 7 April 1999 aged 71, is remembered as one of the leading authorities on Surrealism. A devoted associate of André Breton, he helped organize major international exhibitions and later coordinated post-Surrealist shows. His books, including studies of Breton, Surrealism, Futurism and Symbolism, as well as his collected documentation of Surrealist manifestos, are presented as indispensable scholarly references. The obituary also highlights Pierre's poetry, plays and erotic fiction, particularly Qu'est-ce que Therese?, which was reprinted shortly before his death and recognized as a major erotic work.

Marc Barbezat, who died in Lyon on 26 April 1999 aged 85, founded the independent French press and literary magazine L'Arbalète during the German occupation in 1940. Working initially as his own printer and compositor, he published Jean Genet and numerous major French writers, including Artaud, Camus, Sartre and Vian, while also issuing important translations and Rimbaud's Album Zutique. His press continued despite occupation censorship, and Barbezat personally supported Genet, including joining efforts to secure his liberation. A 1999 auction of his correspondence and manuscripts raised more than five million francs, shortly before Gallimard acquired L'Arbalète's literary copyrights.

Kaii Higashiyama, born Shinkichi Higashiyama in Yokohama in 1908, became Japan’s most popular nihonga painter after studying traditional Japanese art and Western art in Europe. His serene but mystical landscapes, including Afterglow and Road, earned him major recognition, a place in the Japan Art Academy and the Japan Culture Prize, while his large-scale works adorned temples and the Imperial Palace. Despite wartime hardship and personal losses, he developed a distinctive vision rooted in Japan’s humid landscapes and later donated more than 600 sketches and paintings to a museum in Nagano. He died in Tokyo on 6 May 1999.

Olivier Debré is portrayed as a distinguished French abstract painter whose privileged family background coexisted with the suffering and isolation of artistic life. After studying architecture and painting, serving in the Resistance and being wounded during the liberation of Paris, he developed an abstract style influenced by Pablo Picasso and shaped by wartime trauma. His later signes-personnages and signes-paysages works transformed human figures and Loire landscapes into large, emotionally charged fields of colour. Debré went on to receive international exhibitions and major public commissions, including works for the Montreal Expo, French cultural institutions, opera houses, embassies and the Channel Tunnel, culminating in a major 1995 Paris retrospective.

Kazuo Miyagawa, born in Kyoto in 1908, was an innovative Japanese cinematographer whose mastery of light, shade and fluid camera movement was shaped by traditional ink painting. He worked with leading directors including Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, Kon Ichikawa and Yasujiro Ozu, shooting landmark films such as Rashomon, Ugetsu Monogatari and Floating Weeds. Despite making around 130 films and helping bring international attention to Japanese cinema, he was often overlooked in critical histories. His later work included the Tokyo Olympics documentary and commercial Zatoichi films, followed by collaborations with Masahiro Shinoda. Miyagawa died in Kyoto on 7 August 1999, aged 91, after receiving several honors but still lacking a major retrospective in Japan.

Charlotte Perriand is remembered as a pioneering French designer who transformed industrial materials into graceful, practical and playful furniture. The obituary highlights her collaborations with Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, her role in the Union des Artistes Modernes, and the influence of her time in Japan on sliding doors, compact furniture and flexible living spaces. Her work, including a celebrated rocking chaise-longue and a Japanese-inspired tea house at UNESCO’s Paris headquarters, is presented as an enduring contribution to modern design and everyday life.

Keizo Saji, the longtime leader of Suntory and son of its founder Shinjiro Torii, died in Osaka on 3 November 1999, aged 80. Under his presidency from 1961 to 1990, Suntory expanded from whisky into beer and other drinks as Japanese tastes changed. An outspoken Osaka businessman, Saji also became a photographer, painter, haiku poet and essayist, supported young artists, created the Suntory Art Museum and commissioned Tokyo's Suntory Music Hall. His business achievements and extensive cultural patronage established him as one of Japan's most prominent industrialists and arts supporters.

Alain Peyrefitte is remembered as a prominent French diplomat, Gaullist politician, minister and writer whose close relationships with Charles de Gaulle, Georges Pompidou and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing gave him unusual insight into France’s postwar political life. His best-known works included memoirs of de Gaulle and books on China, although scholars—especially Simon Leys—criticized his idealized and insufficiently informed interpretations of Chinese history and Mao-era politics. The obituary also highlights his broad literary interests, academic achievements, ministerial career and leadership at Le Figaro. Peyrefitte died in Paris on 27 November 1999, aged 74.

Roger Frison-Roche, who died in Chamonix on 17 December 1999 aged 93, was a French mountain guide, explorer and bestselling writer. Born in Paris to Savoyard parents, he moved to Chamonix, qualified as a high-mountain guide, founded a climbing school and became the first person to broadcast a radio programme from Mont Blanc. His experiences in the Sahara, Arctic, wartime Tunisia and the Savoyard Resistance informed a prolific body of work, including Premier de cordée, which sold more than three million copies and inspired a generation of Alpine climbers. Despite his commercial success, literary critics largely ignored him, a neglect he regarded with mild regret. He was honored by France and remembered as a writer who celebrated mountains, deserts, Arctic peoples, courage and human dignity.

Argues that the UK’s rising welfare and debt-interest costs make major fiscal reform unavoidable for an incoming Labour government. Suggests Andy Burnham must address two core drivers of welfare spending: increasing economic inactivity due to health issues and rising pension costs from an ageing population. Advocates narrowing eligibility for health‑related benefits, expanding support to keep people in work, and fostering a national debate on mental‑health‑related worklessness. Recommends scrapping the triple lock, raising the state pension age, and enabling later‑life employment through flexible pension access. Warns that without compassionate cuts, more severe measures will eventually be imposed.

David Cameron is portrayed as the central architect of Brexit’s political and economic fallout, accused of making reckless promises, mishandling negotiations, failing to plan for a Leave outcome and abandoning responsibility by resigning immediately after the referendum. His post‑premiership career is depicted as financially motivated, marked by lobbying controversies and lucrative speaking engagements. The piece argues that his legacy should be remembered as one of failure and cowardice rather than competence or charm.

Argues that Keir Starmer’s retreat from planned welfare reforms marked the effective end of his authority, teaching Labour MPs he could be pressured into backing down. Rising incapacity benefit claims, structural incentives that favour inactivity over work, and the party’s reluctance to embrace pro-work reforms are highlighted as core issues. Studies from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Resolution Foundation are cited to show escalating welfare costs and incentives that discourage employment, particularly among young people. Pat McFadden’s leaked comments are framed as accurate critiques of Labour’s internal mindset. The piece concludes that Labour’s future leadership must pursue comprehensive welfare reform to restore economic credibility and moral purpose, keeping McFadden in place to deliver it.

Andy Burnham’s political past and tenure as Greater Manchester mayor are used to assess his potential as prime minister, highlighting criticisms of his sensitivity to criticism and tendency to please, alongside his notable strengths in charisma and emotional connection with voters. His ability to energize supporters and craft a persuasive personal narrative is contrasted with Keir Starmer’s struggle to inspire. Burnham’s recent by-election win is presented as evidence of his electoral appeal, suggesting he could revive Labour’s fortunes despite acknowledged limitations.

Boris Johnson is depicted as a figure shaped by a difficult childhood, emotional isolation and a lifelong need for attention that has driven his political ascent and mishandling of power. The BBC’s new Brexit documentary highlights his role in the referendum, which the analysis argues he embraced more for personal prominence than conviction. His current quiet rural life is portrayed as superficially idyllic but unlikely to satisfy his enduring desire for influence, suggesting he may seek a political return despite his past failures and public fatigue.

The article argues that increasing the number of women in political and ministerial roles is important, but that policies affecting women matter even more. It examines the Conservative Party’s gender imbalance, Labour’s own leadership and representation problems, and a growing gender gap among younger voters. It calls for men in politics to treat childcare, social care, women’s economic inequality, sexual violence and harmful sexual norms as mainstream policy concerns rather than narrowly defined “women’s issues.”

Marcel Marceau, born Marcel Mangel in Strasbourg in 1923, became the world’s most recognizable mime through his creation of Bip, a melancholy and comic character inspired by silent-film performers and literary waifs. After helping Jewish children escape during the French Resistance and studying corporeal mime under Etienne Decroux, he joined Jean-Louis Barrault’s company before forming his own troupe in 1949. Financial difficulties led him to develop a celebrated solo career, touring 65 countries and bringing mime to international audiences. He also appeared in films including Barbarella and Silent Movie, received major French honors and honorary doctorates, and helped establish a permanent mime school in Paris. He died in Paris on 22 September 2007.

Theresa May remains prime minister largely because no Conservative successor commands sufficient support. Drawing a parallel with Michael Howard, the column argues that May could use her remaining time to promote younger Tory talent, but that a reshuffle alone would not solve the party's deeper problem: many voters, particularly those under 40, see Conservatives as unwilling to address housing costs, stagnant wages and job insecurity. The party must confront its reputation as the “Nasty Party” and develop a new mission before choosing its next leader, otherwise it risks losing the next election to Labour.

Setsuko Hara began acting at 15 after being discovered by Nikkatsu and rose to prominence through the 1937 German-Japanese production The Daughter of the Samurai. Her career expanded after the Second World War, particularly through collaborations with Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu and Mikio Naruse. She became internationally celebrated for her refined, emotionally restrained performances in films including Late Spring, Early Summer and Tokyo Story, with the latter regarded as one of Japanese cinema's greatest works. Hara retired abruptly in 1962 at 42, withdrawing from public life and preserving the mystery surrounding her private affairs and relationship with Ozu.

Patrice Chéreau, who died in Paris from lung cancer aged 68, was an influential French director whose work crossed theatre, opera and film. He gained international recognition through his controversial 1976–80 Bayreuth Ring Cycle, staged against an industrial backdrop and later celebrated for transforming contemporary opera direction. His films included the acclaimed La Reine Margot and the provocative Intimacy. Alongside major productions of works by Wagner, Berg, Mozart, Ibsen, Koltès and Strauss, he developed socially ambitious theatre projects and collaborated with leading artists including Pierre Boulez and Daniel Barenboim. His final production, Elektra, received a standing ovation, reinforcing his reputation for theatrical innovation and uncompromising artistic vision.

Elizabeth Jenkins, born in Hitchin in 1905, was a novelist and historical biographer whose career produced 24 books. Her notable works included The Tortoise and the Hare, Lady Caroline Lamb, Jane Austen and Elizabeth the Great. She was praised for combining rigorous research with wit, empathy and an acute eye for historical detail, particularly in her studies of formidable women and literary figures. Jenkins died on 5 September 2010, aged 104.

Francisco Ayala, born in Granada in 1906, became a major novelist, short-story writer and essayist after Franco's regime forced him into exile in 1939. Teaching in Latin America and the United States before returning to Spain in 1976, he developed an ironic, morally detached literary examination of power, political violence and the abuses of dictatorship. Works including Usurpers, The Lamb's Head, Death as a Way of Life and The Garden of Earthly Delights explored exile, the Spanish Civil War and the corruption of human relationships. Celebrated with major Spanish literary honours, including the Cervantes Prize, Ayala died in Madrid in 2009 at the age of 103.

Louis-René des Forêts, the French poet, novelist and painter, is remembered for a small but highly influential body of work shaped by grief, emotional shock and the struggle to speak. His novel Le Bavard, story collection La Chambre des Enfants and later semi-autobiographical work Ostinato established his reputation among a devoted literary readership. After the accidental death of his daughter Elisabeth, he largely withdrew from writing and produced obsessive Chinese-ink drawings before returning to literature through translation, poetry, literary reviewing and the eventual completion of Ostinato. A committed pacifist and early signatory of the Manifeste des 121 opposing the Algerian War, he also maintained a largely silent, enigmatic public presence until his death in Paris in December 2000.

Shinichi Suzuki, the Japanese violinist and educator who died in Matsumoto in 1998, developed the Suzuki Method for teaching very young children to play instruments. Drawing on children’s capacity to absorb language and imitate sounds, he argued that talent is fostered through education, encouragement and parental support rather than being purely innate. After studying in Berlin and returning to Japan, Suzuki founded and led musical institutions and ensembles, established the Talent Education Movement in Matsumoto after the Second World War, and expanded instruction beyond violin to piano and flute. His approach gained international recognition after a 1964 US tour and spread through Japan, Britain and many other countries, eventually reaching hundreds of thousands of students.

Annie Fratellini, a descendant of the renowned Fratellini circus dynasty, is remembered as a pioneering female clown who modernized circus performance. After briefly pursuing Dixieland jazz and appearing in films, she returned to circus with her husband Pierre Etaix and co-founded Europe’s first circus school in 1975. The school trained students from outside traditional circus families in a broad range of technical and creative disciplines, helping renew the art form. Fratellini’s final performance took place in Paris shortly before her death on 1 July 1977.