Yuichi Seirai and Toshiyuki Horie were chosen Tuesday evening as winners of the 124th Akutagawa Prize, one of Japan's most prestigious literary prizes, while the Naoki Prize for popular fiction went to Kiyoshi Shigematsu and Fumio Yamamoto.
Seirai, 42, won the Akutagawa Prize for his story "Seisui" ("Holy Water"). The work involves a young man facing the question of faith as his father, a descendant of a persecuted Christian, reawakens to faith in the face of terminal cancer.
Seirai, from Nagasaki and an official of the Nagasaki Municipal Office, has written other works about Christianity that feature his hometown, which in the Edo Period saw many Christians struggle to maintain their faith in the face of a government ban and severe persecution.