Departures of note

Akira Sasakura was a Japanese novelist born in Nishiwaki, Hyogo Prefecture. After graduating from Waseda University, he worked at an advertising agency and as a freelance magazine journalist before making his literary debut in 1980 with Umi o Koeta Monotachi (Those Who Crossed the Sea), which earned honorable mention in the Subaru Literary Prize. In 1988 he won the Suntory Mystery Prize for Hyoryu Saiban (Drifting Trial), and the following year he received the 101st Naoki Prize for Toi Kuni kara no Satsujinsha (The Murderer from a Distant Country), a novel about a murder committed by a Japanese woman working abroad. He wrote widely across genres, including the five-volume Nippon Jitsugyoka Retsuden series and the screenplay for the 2002 film Shin Yukiguni. In 2005 Sasakura moved to Thailand, and in 2016 he was ordained as a Theravada Buddhist monk in Chiang Mai under the name Phra Akira Amaro. He continued writing as a monk, publishing books on Thai Buddhism and meditation practice. He died of interstitial pneumonia on October 11, 2026, at the age of 77.