Yuten Sawanishi is the associate professor of the Faculty of International Studies at the Department of Intercultural Communication, Ryukoku University, Kyoto. He is currently researching how Western literature has influenced Japan, through the case of Akutagawa Ryunosuke. His most recent book is "Through Akutagawa Ryunosuke's Bookshelves: Western Literatures He Read and the Works He Wrote" (2025). The book discusses the results of an exhaustive survey of 844 Western books which Ryunosuke Akutagawa possessed. Yuten is as a scholar of modern Japanese and comparative literature as well as a novelist. An English translation of his short story "Filling up with sugar" was published in "The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories" (2020, edited by Jay Rubin with a foreword by Haruki Murakami). In 2024, he will represent Japanese writers at the International Program for Writing (IWP) at the University of Iowa. He is also a member of the executive committee of the Kyoto Writers Residency.