in 1935, kawaguchi won the first naoki prize for a short story titled "tsuruhachi tsurujirō". he followed this with a serialized novel, "aizen katsura", a melodramatic love story involving a nurse and a doctor, which ran from 1936-1938. the story became a tremendously popular bestseller and gained him considerable fame. it was later made into a movie starring kinuyo tanaka and ken uehara, and was the basis of numerous television series.