John F. Howes and Denis Thériault have been named winners of the Japan-Canada Literary Award, which recognizes Canadian authors writing about Japan and Japanese themes.

Each winner will receive $10,000 in a ceremony at the Japanese Embassy in Ottawa next Tuesday.

Vancouver-based writer Howes is author of Japan's Modern Prophet: Uchimura Kanzo,1861-1930, an English-language biography. 

Howes, a professor of Asian studies at the University of British Columbia, examines the rise of modernism and what it means to be a Christian in Japan in his biography of Kanzo, whose spiritual reflections influenced a generation of political thinkers.

Thériault is author of the French-language book Le facteur émotif, a humorous novel about a mail carrier who uses haiku, a Japanese form of poetry, to woo another man's lover in a distant land when the man dies. Thériault has written for theatre and television; Le facteur emotif is his second novel.

The award is administered by the Canada Council for the Arts and sponsored by the Japan-Canada Fund, set aside as an endowment in perpetuity for a literary award.