Japan-based Chinese author Yang Yi was nominated Monday along with six others by the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Literature candidate for Japan's Akutagawa Prize, which is the country's topmost literary award for new writers, becoming the first Chinese to get close to the honor.

File photo of late Japanese writer Akutagawa

The 43-year-old female originally from northeastern China's Heilongjiang province was picked by the award selection body for her novel Wang-chan, which was written in Japanese and tells of a story about a Japan-based Chinese woman working as a matchmaker between Japanese men and Chinese women.

It's very rare for non-native Japanese speakers to be nominated for the privileged literary award.

Winners of the 138th Akutagawa Prize will be announced after a screening committee meeting in Tokyo on January 16.

Yang is currently a Chinese teacher in Tokyo. She got the famous annual New Writer's Award of the Bungeishunju Magazine in October for the novel, becoming the first foreigner given the prize.

The Akutagawa Prize, which was established in 1935 to commemorate a late Japanese writer, is aimed at encouraging Japan's new writers of short stories of serious fiction.

(Xinhua News Agency January 7, 2007)