Japanese are embracing Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro, even if they're not sure who he is

Kazuo Ishiguro at a press conference in London on Oct 5 after being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The author said that winning the prize was a ‘magnificent honour’ and ‘flabbergastingly flattering’ Photo: AFP

Minutes after Japan-born Briton Kazuo Ishiguro was announced as the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature, Japanese people took to Twitter to ask: “Who (the heck) is Kazuo Ishiguro?”

For those who had never heard of the author of The Remains Of The Day (1989) and other award-winning novels, the name that flashed across smartphones and TV screens on Thursday, Oct 5, was puzzling – it was undoubtedly Japanese-sounding, but written in the local script reserved for foreign names and words.