Ken WAKASAKI (1947- ) is a Japanese novelist whose works are familiar to those who spent their youth in the late Showa era: 1978 to 1989. In fact, in those days, he was very popular among teenagers through his tireless novelization of all the Space Battleship Yamato series and other well-known anime and manga such as The Galaxy Express 999, Mu's White Whale, and Triton of the Sea. Although his fame appears to have been from these novelizations, he has written a large number of entertaining novels out of his own imagination.
This paper introduces Ken WAKASAKI's 51 original novels for young people published during the later years of the reign of Emperor Showa. Aside from his readable OKITA Souji, which deals with the historical figure, the best swordsman of the Shinsengumi police force in old Kyoto, and his best-seller Hakkyuu-wo-tatake! (Hit a Smash!), which describes how a female high school table tennis player with heart trouble wins championships, WAKASAKI's favorite genres were science fiction and mystery: above all, the Esper series, which consists of five novels about exciting battles between the high school students of various superhuman abilities and the wickedly powerful Satan people from outer space, is excellent. The mystery counterpart is the series of Akira SHIRATORI, the 14-year-old boy who is a Tokyo public prosecutor as well as a devout Mormon, the best of which is the first novel Kobaruto-buruu-yuukai-jiken (Cobalt Blue Kidnapping) with an unforgettably unexpected ending.

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