Ken Hirano

was the pen name of a prominent Japanese literary critic and longtime professor of literature at Meiji University. His real name was .

Hirano was one of the seven founders of the journal ''Kindai Bungaku'' ("Modern Literature"), and played a starring role in the "politics and literature debates" of the 1940s and 1950s, as well as the "pure literature debate" of the early 1960s. In 1977, he was awarded the prestigious Imperial Prize from the Japan Art Academy. Provided by Wikipedia