Japanese society was originally organized according to a caste system: four classes of warrior, farmer, craftsman, and merchant.  The Peer class ranked above these divisions and the outcasts ranked below.

Review of author's life:
Born in 1899 in Osaka, Japan.
Orphaned as a child, educated at Tokyo Imperial University (degree in 1924).
Short story writer, novelist, art collector, patron of the arts through is establishment of a library and his support of other authors.
He was mostly divorced from political life--he was a writer who tried to preserve, through literature and the publishing of older texts, Japan's traditions and older ways of life. He died in 1972, by his own hand.

Nobel Prize Winner in 1968 for his fiction which includes the following titles (these are translated into English):
The Izu Dancer and Others (this includes the excellent short story, "The Mole."
Snow Country
Thousand Cranes
Sound of the Mountain
Master of Go
Sadness and Beauty
The House of the Sleeping Beauties