:Morio Kita

File:Kita Morio.jpg

{{nihongo|Morio Kita|北杜夫|Kita Morio}} was the pen name of {{nihongo|Sokichi Saitō|斎藤宗吉|Saitō Sōkichi|extra=1 May 1927 – 24 October 2011}}, a Japanese psychiatrist, novelist and essayist.{{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20111028000715/http://www.houseofjapan.com/local/novelist-essayist-morio-kita-dies-at-84 Novelist-essayist "Morio Kita dies at 84"]}}

Kita was the second son of poet Mokichi Saitō. {{ill|Shigeta Saitō|ja|斎藤茂太}}, his older brother, was also a psychiatrist. The essayist Yuka Saitō is Kita's daughter.{{cite web|url=http://mdn.mainichi.jp/arts/archive/news/2011/10/20111026p2g00m0et117000c.html|title=Novelist-essayist Morio Kita dies at 84|accessdate=24 February 2012|date=26 October 2011|publisher=The Mainichi Daily News|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://archive.today/20130218184538/http://mdn.mainichi.jp/arts/archive/news/2011/10/20111026p2g00m0et117000c.html|archivedate=18 February 2013}}[http://www.webtoday.jp/2010/02/313.html Lecture of Morio Kita and Yuka Saitō in Hokuto, Yamanashi, March 13, 2010] {{in lang|ja}}

Kita attended Azabu High School and Matsumoto Higher School (now part of Shinshu University), and graduated from Tohoku University's School of Medicine.{{cite web|url=http://sankei.jp.msn.com/life/news/120909/art12090908380005-n5.htm|script-title=ja:【旧制高校寮歌物語】（６）教授にウケた北杜夫の珍答案|accessdate=20 October 2012|date=9 September 2012|publisher=Sankei Shimbun|language=ja|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20120911132121/http://sankei.jp.msn.com/life/news/120909/art12090908380005-n5.htm|archivedate=11 September 2012}} He initially worked as a doctor at Keio University Hospital. Motivated by the collections of his father's poems and the books of German author Thomas Mann, he decided to become a novelist.

Kita suffered from manic–depressive disorder from middle age onwards.{{cite web|url=http://sankei.jp.msn.com/life/news/111026/art11102613280007-n1.htm|script-title=ja:【北杜夫さん死去】重厚な純文学と、ユーモア作品が同居|accessdate=24 February 2012|date=26 October 2011|publisher=Sankei Shimbun|language=ja|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20111130000503/http://sankei.jp.msn.com/life/news/111026/art11102613280007-n1.htm|archivedate=30 November 2011}}

Awards

1960: Akutagawa Prize, for the novel, In The Corner Of Night And Fog, which takes its title from Nacht und Nebel, the Nazi campaign to eliminate Jews, the mentally ill and other minorities. The novel concerns the moral quandary of staff at a German mental hospital during the final years of the Second World War. Faced with demands from the SS that the most severely ill patients be segregated for transportation to a special camp, where it is obvious that they will be eliminated, the more morally conscious of the doctors make desperate efforts to protect the patients without outwardly defying the authorities. A parallel theme is the personal tragedy of a young Japanese researcher affiliated with the mental hospital, whose own schizophrenia has been triggered by the disappearance of his half-Jewish wife. (Shinchosha Co., Morio Kita - In the Corner of Night and Fog and Other Stories, 2011)

Bibliography

= Novels =

Ghosts (1954)
{{cite book |author=Kita, Morio |title=The House of Nire |translator=Dennis Keene |date=1984 |publisher=Kodansha International |location=New York }}Briefly reviewed in the January 14, 1985 issue of The New Yorker, p.117.

= Essays =

{{cite book |author1=Kita, Morio |author2=Yuka Saitō |name-list-style=amp |title=Papa wa Tanoshii Sōutubyō |lang=ja |location= |publisher=Asahi Shimbun |date= }}

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;Bibliography notes