Ken WAKASAKI (1947- ) novelized as many as 27 titles of Japan's popular anime, manga, and TV dramas from 1978 to 1990. As a multi-talented novelist who graduated from Tokyo University, he was able to create unique books retaining the very essence of the original visual works by using his knowledge of not only science, but also human beings both male and female. So, it was quite natural that the intelligent author became very popular among young Japanese from junior high school to high school students as soon as his novel version of the epoch-making anime movie Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato came out in August, 1978.
Just after the success of this book, he was recognized as a master hand at novelization. His works include The Galaxy Express 999, Mu's White Whale, and Triton of the Sea, not to mention all the Space Battleship Yamato series. In addition to these major heroic fantasies, he also novelized the TV animations of King Arthur and Marco Polo, both of which are now almost completely forgotten in Japan. WAKASAKI's less known novelizations of manga and TV dramas dealing with everyday lives of junior high school baseball players, junior high school teachers, girl actresses, and high school baseball players with beautiful female students are respectively Akio CHIBA's Captain, Tokyo Broadcasting System Television's 1-B Class Teacher Shinpachi-sensei, Suzue MIUCHI's Glass Mask, and Mitsuru ADACHI's Nine, all of which are masterpieces as novels. Which means you can enjoy reading them without knowing the originals.
While Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs boasts of "Cool Japan" anime and manga, it ignores the important contribution of WAKASAKI's hard work. It is lamentable that his old books have become less and less accessible at online bookstores and even in public libraries. Now is the time when his novels are properly stored for future generations of those who love Japanese pop culture, regardless of nationalities.

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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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A talented producer Yoshinobu NISHIZAKI (1934-2010), who is famous for his legendary anime movie Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato (1978), was disgraced as a "scoundrel" in his first biography titled The Man Who Made Space Battleship Yamato: The Madness of Yoshinobu NISHIZAKI (2015). Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato and its TV series Space Battleship Yamato II (1978-79) were recently remade as Star Blazers: Space Battleship Yamato 2202 (2017-19) by Harutoshi FUKUI, novelist known for film versions of his original works such as Lorelei and Gundam Unicorn. Contrary to Yamato fans’ expectations, the new Yamato 2202 turned out to be a sheer failure, or another disgrace to the lamented NISHIZAKI.
In this paper, a close comparison is made between Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato and Space Battleship Yamato 2202, with some reference to NISHIZAKI's other Yamato films and FUKUI's own novels. As a result, their themes are proved to be opposed to each other: NISHIZAKI, belonging to the war generation, evaluated "Tokko" suicide attacks as respectable acts to protect compatriots, while FUKUI, postwar democrat, blindly believes in the "Peace" Constitution of Japan given by the US general Douglass MacArthur, from which protagonist KODAI's unbelievably obsessive, pacifistic deeds originate.

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