Author 'avoided nothing' in racy love stories

It is a story familiar to Chinese readers. It has extramarital affairs, graphic sex and ends in suicide. And it comes from Japan.

It's Junichi Watanabe's 1997 love story Shitsurakuen, or A Lost Paradise, that took the country by storm. When the popular author passed away on April 30 in Tokyo at the age of 80, digital candles were lit across the nation's social networks with quotes pulled from the book that transfixed readers with its unusual depiction of love.

"I've read every one of his books. The love stories are irresistible, intense, dark and desperate," wrote Yu Ying, a prominent doctor, on her micro blog account on weibo. "It overturned my view of love."