Which Japanese author wrote the novel Twenty-Four Eyes?

The Japanese author who wrote the novel Twenty-Four Eyes was Sakae Tsuboi.

Tsuboi published Nijūshi no Hitomi, commonly translated as Twenty-Four Eyes, in 1952. The novel follows a schoolteacher and her twelve pupils on Shōdoshima, tracing their lives through poverty, militarism, war, and social change. Its title refers to the children’s twenty-four eyes.

The story became especially famous through Keisuke Kinoshita’s 1954 film adaptation, starring Hideko Takamine. That film helped make Shōdoshima widely known in Japan and established Twenty-Four Eyes as Tsuboi’s best-known work.

A common mix-up is to attribute the novel to a major male Japanese novelist such as Yasunari Kawabata, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, or Osamu Dazai. Tsuboi was also a poet and novelist, and her husband, Shigeji Tsuboi, was a literary figure, but Sakae Tsuboi alone is credited as the author of Twenty-Four Eyes.