Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Guin Saga is a heroic fantasy epic written by Kaoru Kurimoto about a warrior cursed to wear a leopard head mask. Kurimoto began writing it in 1979 and continued until her death in 2009, completing 130 volumes. The series has been translated into English, German, French, Italian, and Russian.
Kaoru Kurimoto was the pen name of a Japanese novelist who also wrote under the name Azusa Nakajima. She used Kurimoto for fiction and Nakajima for criticism and music. She was born in Tokyo and studied literature at Waseda University, graduating in 1975.
Kurimoto won the Gunzo Prize for New Writers in 1977 as Azusa Nakajima, and the Edogawa Rampo Prize in 1978 for her debut novel "Our Era" as Kaoru Kurimoto. She was the youngest person ever to win the Edogawa Rampo Prize at the time.
Kurimoto's 1979 novel Mayonaka no Tenshi (Midnight Angel) is credited with pioneering interest in the shonen-ai and yaoi genres before they became widely popular. She also contributed stories and criticism to the first issue of the yaoi magazine June in 1978, under both her pen names and other pseudonyms.
Kaoru Kurimoto died on the 26th of May, 2009, aged 56, in a Tokyo hospital from pancreatic cancer, which had been diagnosed in 2007. She had been writing the 130th volume of the Guin Saga until the 23rd of May, 2009, three days before her death.
Beyond her literary career, Kurimoto was a playwright, composer, and pianist who performed with her own jazz ensemble, the Azusa Nakajima Trio. She wrote criticism and music under the Azusa Nakajima pen name in addition to her extensive fiction output.