Shoson Nagahara (born 1901) was a Japanese-American writer who immigrated to Los Angeles, California in the 1920s.
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He is known for writing about Little Tokyo in Los Angeles, in the Japanese language, for Japanese readers.
Biography and career
He was born in Hiroshima Prefecture. His birth name was Hideaki Nagahara. Shoson Nagahara was his pen name. He was age 17 when he arrived in Seattle, Washington in the summer of 1918. In 1920, he was living in a boarding house in Los Angeles. It is uncertain what happened to him after 1928.
His first novel, Lament in the Night, appeared in 1925. Its protagonist was a day laborer, Ishikawa Sazuko, seeking work in Los Angeles. The work has been called a "naturalist noir masterpiece", and was reviewed in "the regional Japanese-language press."
Shōson went on to produce a serial novel, under the sponsorship of Rafu Shimpo, The Tale of Osato. It appeared from November 1925 to May 1926.