Departures of note

Toshiko Kanzawa was a Japanese children's literature author who wrote fairy tales, nursery rhymes and poetry across a career spanning more than six decades. Born in Kitakyushu, she studied at the Bunka Gakuin under the poet Sato Haruo and debuted in 1958 with Tampopo no Uta before devoting herself fully to writing for children from the mid-1960s.

Her best-known work, Kuma no Ko Ufu (The Bear's Child Woof), published in 1969, became a long-selling classic of Japanese juvenile literature, celebrated for its fresh portrayal of the joy and wonder of living. Her 1978 book Inai Inai Baaya won both the Noma Children's Literature Prize and the Japan Children's Literature Association Prize, and her 2004 work Shika yo Ore no Kyōdai yo, depicting the lives of a Siberian minority people, received the Shogakukan Children's Publishing Culture Award and the Kodansha Publishing Culture Award for picture books.

Kanzawa also wrote the popular Furaipan Jīsan and Chibikko Kamu no Bōken, and her works were widely read and adapted. She remained creatively active into her later years and was regarded as one of the elders of Japanese children's literature. She died of old age in Mitaka, Tokyo, at the age of 102.