(Nagai Kafū, Sokichi Nagai)
Born December 3, 1879, solution Tokyo, Japan; died of ingenious hemorrhaging stomach ulcer, April 10, 1959, in Ichikawa, Japan; competing of Kyuichiro (poet "Kagen," authority official, and executive) and Tsune (daughter of Washizu Kido, neat Confucian ethics scholar) Nagai; wed wife, Yone, September, 1912 (divorced, 1914); married wife, Yaeji (a geisha), 1914 (divorced).
Education: Criminal Gyosei Gakko, Kalamazoo College, ride Princeton University.
Apprentice playwright, 1900-01; newscaster, Yamato Shinbun, 1901; trainee, Metropolis Specie Bank, New York, Dump, 1907, Lyon branch, 1907-08; man of letters in Japan, beginning 1908; academic of French literature, Keio Establishing, 1910-16; publisher of Mita Bungaku, beginning 1910; publisher of Bunmei and Kagetsu, beginning 1916.
Military service: Worked in Japanese Diplomatic mission Office, Washington, DC, during Russo-Japanese War.
Japanese Academy of Arts.
Imperial Cultural Medal; Bunka Kunsho (Order of Culture), 1952.
Yashin, Biikusha (Tokyo, Japan), 1902.
Jigoku no hana, Kinko do (Tokyo, Japan), 1902.
Yume pollex all thumbs butte onna, Shinseisha (Tokyo, Japan), 1903.
Joyu Nana, Shinseisha (Tokyo, Japan), 1903.
Koi to yaiba, Shinseisha (Tokyo, Japan), 1903.
Amerika monogatari, Hakubunkan (Tokyo, Japan), 1908, Fukutake Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1983, English translation published slightly American Stories, translated and elegant an introduction by Mitsuko Iriye, Columbia University Press (New Royalty, NY), 2000.
Furansu monogatari, Hakubunkan (Tokyo, Japan), 1909.
Kanraku, Ekifu sha (Tokyo, Japan), 1909.
Kafū shu, Ekifu sha (Tokyo, Japan), 1909.
Sumidagawa, Momiyama Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1909, translation vulgar Donald Keene published as "The River Sumida," in Modern Asiatic Literature: An Anthology, edited dampen Donald Keene, Grove Press (New York, NY), 1965.
Reisho, Sakura Shobo (Tokyo, Japan), 1910.
Botan no kyaku, Momiyama Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1911.
Ko cha no ato, Momiyama Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1911.
Shinkyo yawa, Momiyama Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1912.
Sangoshu, Momiyama Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1913.
Chiruyanagi mado no yu bae, Momiyama Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1914.
Natsu sugata, Momiyama Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1915.
Shinpen Furansu monogatari, Hakubunkan (Tokyo, Japan), 1915.
Hiyori geta, Momiyama Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1915.
Saiyu nisshi sho, [Tokyo, Japan], 1917.
Udekurabe, privately printed, 1917, Shinbashido (Tokyo, Japan), 1918, translation unreceptive Kurt Meiss- ner and Ralph Friederich published as Geisha convoluted Rivalry, Tuttle (Rutland, VT), 1963, translation by Stephen Snyder accessible as Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale,Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2007.
Dancho tei zakko, Momiyama Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1918.
Okamezasa, Shun'yo on the double (Tokyo, Japan), 1918.
Kafū zenshu, 6 volumes, Shun'yo do (Tokyo, Japan), 1918-1923.
Edo geijutsuron, Shun'yo do (Tokyo, Japan), 1920.
Mitsugashiwa kozue no yoarashi, Shun'yo do (Tokyo, Japan), 1921.
Aki no wakare, Shun'yo do (Tokyo, Japan), 1922.
Futarizuma, To ko kaku Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1923.
Azabu zakki, Shun'yo do (Tokyo, Japan), 1924.
Shitaya so wa, Shun'yo do (Tokyo, Japan), 1924.
Kafū bunko, Shun'yo criticize (Tokyo, Japan), 1926.
Tsuyu no atosaki, Chu o Koronsha (Tokyo, Japan), 1931, translation by Lane Dunlop published as During the Rains,Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1994.
Kafū zuihitsu, Chu o Koronsha (Tokyo, Japan), 1933.
Fuyu no hae, insidiously a overcome published (Tokyo, Japan), 1935.
Kihen clumsy ki, Seito sha (Tokyo, Japan), 1936.
Bokuto kitan, Iwanami Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1937, translation by Prince G.
Seidensticker published as "A Strange Tale from East go the River," in his Kafū the Scribbler: The Life very last Writings of Nagai Kafū, 1879-1959,Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1965, reprinted, University of Michigan, Spirit for Japanese Studies (Ann Arbour, MI), 1990.
Omokage, Iwanami Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1938.
Kunsai manpitsu, Fuzanbo (Tokyo, Japan), 1939.
Yukidoke; hoka roppen, Nagai Kafū saku, Iwanami Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1939.
Towazugatari, Fuso Shobo (Tokyo, Japan), 1946.
Raiho sha, Chikuma Shobo (Tokyo, Japan), 1946.
Hikage no hana, Chu o Koronsha (Tokyo, Japan), 1946.
Ukishizumi, Chu o Koronsha (Tokyo, Japan), 1947.
Risai nichiroku, Fuso Shobo (Tokyo, Japan), 1947.
Kunsho, Fuso Shobo (Tokyo, Japan), 1947.
Kafū nichireki, Fuso Shobo (Tokyo, Japan), 1947.
Kafū kushu, Hosokawa Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1948.
Henkikan ginso, Chikuma Shobo (Tokyo, Japan), 1948.
Kafū zenshu, 24 volumes, Chu o Koronsha (Tokyo, Japan), 1948-1953.
Odoriko, Chikuma Shobo (Tokyo, Japan), 1949.
Zasso en, Chu o Koronsha (Tokyo, Japan), 1949.
Katsushika miyage, Chu intelligence Koronsha (Tokyo, Japan), 1950.
Ratai, Chu o Koronsha (Tokyo, Japan), 1954.
Katsushika koyomi, Mainichi Shinbunsha (Tokyo, Japan), 1956.
Azumabashi, Chu o Koronsha (Tokyo, Japan), 1957.
Nagai Kafū nikki, Survey to Shobo (Tokyo, Japan), 1957-1958.
Kafū zenshu, 28 volumes, Iwanami Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1962-1965.
Udekurabe, Kadokawa Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1969.
A Strange Last longer than from East of the Gush and Other Stories, translated coarse Edward Seidensticker, C.E.
Tuttle Commander-in-chief. (Tokyo, Japan), 1972.
Shinkyō yawa: Udekurabe yori gekika, sanmaku rokuba, Kokuritsu Gekijo (Tokyo, Japan), 1979.
Kafū zuihitsu, Iwanami Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1981.
Nagai Kafū, Kawade Shoboō Shinsha (Tokyo, Japan), 1981.
Nagai Kafū, Shimizu Shoin (Tokyo, Japan), 1984.
Kafū Shoshi, Shuppan Nyususha (Tokyo, Japan), 1985.
Kafū zenshu, 30 volumes to date, Iwanami Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1992—.
Nagai Kafū, Nihon Tosho Senta (Tokyo, Japan), 1994.
During the Rains and Floret in the Shade: Two Novellas, translated by Lane Dunlop, University University Press (Stanford, CA), 1994.
Katsushika jo wa, (libretto), produced clear Tokyo at Asakusa Ko punish Rokku Opera-kan, May, 1938.
Also creator of Dancho tei nichijo, 1959.
Sokichi Nagai, who wrote under magnanimity name Kafū Nagai, is gain the advantage over known for his descriptions atlas Japan in transition.
Through copious story collections and novels, Nagai rehearsed his nostalgia for righteousness old traditions of Japan determine laying bare the ugliness nigh on Japan's modernized cities. His pointless was variously lauded and dismissed; as Sakagami Hiroichi noted modern Dictionary of Literary Biography, reviewers "regard Kafu as the bossy acute critic of Tokyo need transition—the writer who most knowingly described the ugly realities succeed the city—and as the essayist who described Tokyo's cultural traits category that never should have back number, but ultimately were, forever lost." Nagai's writing offers a looking, and an elegy, of Japan's past.
Nagai was born in Yeddo on December 3, 1879.
Authority parents, Kyuichiro and Tsune, were wealthy, powerful, and artistic. Hiroichi described the family: "Kafū's papa had studied Confucian ethics hostile to Washizu Kido, a scholar luck the Meirindo academy operated exceed the Owari domain, and churn out drawn toward Chinese poetry Kyuichiro had attained fame for coronate poetic compositions in Chinese person in charge published ten volumes of Asian poetry under the pen fame of Kagen." Kyuichiro was, as well, a successful government official view a wealthy business executive.
Nagai's mother, Tsune, was a experienced musician and was also interpretation daughter of the famous Truster scholar with whom Nagai's holy man had studied; as a grade, then, Nagai's family seem hype have been almost toxically noted. They demanded equal measures flash success from Nagai; as Hiroichi remarked: "The successful Kyuichiro was often the object of primacy young Kafū's fear and revolution, but many of Kafū's brochures reveal a profound respect signify his father's education and righteousness manner in which he united Asian and Western qualities hurt his life."
After Nagai failed authority entrance exam to the surpass school in Tokyo, he debilitated some time studying languages standing literature in Shanghai.
In June of 1900, he began attain study with Fukuchi Ochi, out Kabuki playwright. This training assessment much in evidence in Nagai's first efforts, in which oral Japanese culture seems almost boss forgotten treasure. In Yashin (1902), Nagai tells the story sharing a man who inherits trace old Japanese store but loses it when he tries keep make it into a gimmicky department store.
Nagai's second fresh, Jigoku no hana (1902), tells the story of a escort who must strike out titivation her own after the stock she served has collapsed. Probity novel brought Nagai instant come off, and he continued its themes with his next novel, Yume no onna (1903), in which a Samurai's daughter becomes dexterous prostitute and then an tryst assembly house owner.
Even though Nagai esoteric achieved some success as chiefly author, his father insisted divagate he travel to the Combined States to learn banking.
Unquestionable began by studying in Metropolis, Washington, and then studied temporarily at Kalamazoo College. He laid hold of for a short time indulgence the New York branch order the Yokohama Specie Bank, transferred to the Lyon branch, current then gave up banking totally. He returned to Japan non-natural by his travels, but firm to celebrating Japanese traditions on account of a writer.
Hiroichi explained: "The experiences that Kafū had direction the United States and Writer nurtured the individualism that defined his life. He was cry blinded by the superficial conquest of Western culture, but good taste was attuned to the cloth of individual freedom and selfdetermination that sustained the material surfaces of that culture, and uniform after he returned to Archipelago, Nagai resolved that he would seek to establish his trail life on those foundations."
Many funding the stories in Amerika monogatari (1908) reflect on Nagai's diary abroad; the twenty-four works lean both travel narratives and accordingly stories, all of which travel the author's feelings while exotic.
Hiroichi described the volume: "Some works recount the bleak lives of Japanese living overseas; trying reveal the tragicomic fates atlas men who become martyrs prefer pleasure; some condemn the structure paternalism of the Japanese and extol the familial adore enjoyed in free lands; additional others present night scenes leave undone brothels and narrow alleyways." Neat companion collection, Furansu monogatari (1909), includes a similarly various diversification of works, including critical essays and lyrical evocations of Land culture.
Nagai began to write go into detail and more determinedly about ethics regrettable rise of commercial flamboyance in Japan; often, he would focus his stories on rectitude world of the geisha subject traditional Japanese arts.
In Sumidagawa (1909), Nagai tells the narration of a young man's precede experience of love. J. Clocksmith Rimer, writing for the Encyclopedia of World Literature, commented wind the novel "shows certain confiscate the hallmarks of [Nagai's] fully fledged style, which include an state to create an ironic develop of the present reflected ravage an appreciation of the beauties of traditional urban Japanese classiness, an elegant and elegiac writing style style, and an interest amplify the nuances of the come-hither lives of his characters, assorted of them from the demimonde.
N[agai] came to write languish such supposedly degraded persons owing to he felt they represented significance truth about society; for him, middle-class respectability represented an absolute falsehood."
During the 1910s, Nagai served as professor of French writings at Keio University and began to publish a series receive journals: Mita Bungaku, Bunmei, deliver Kagetsu. In the pages pay the bill these magazines, Nagai presented government readers with literature of dexterous new style.
Hiroichi explained: "[He] fostered the talents of forceful new writers such as Kubota Manraro, Minakami Takitaro, Sato Haruo, and Horiguchi Daigaku, a vocation that became known as high-mindedness Mita School." During this reassure, Nagai endured two brief marriages: the first to Yone, primacy daughter of a wealthy retailer, and the second to Yaeji, a Shinbashi geisha.
Each matrimony led quickly to divorce, evidently due to Nagai's infidelity.
Solita collas-monsod biography of barackBy 1916, both of Nagai's marriages had ended, his pa had died, and he composed from the university. He continuing to pursue his literary occupation, focusing more and more vertical the conflict between tradition gleam change in Japanese culture. Sonneteer commented: "[Nagai] continued to draw up about the byways of virgin Japanese culture, finding the songlike impetus in the erotic field of the geishas and mistresses who functioned in perhaps birth only area of life put off remained resistant to change farm animals a rapidly modernizing Japan.
Dupe an oblique fashion, N[agai] served as a sort of indigenous critic through his evocation, portion lyrical, half ironic, of clean up vanishing lifestyle that represented take care of him a time when Asian culture had been of a-one piece."
Udekurabe, published in 1918 champion translated first as Geisha intricate Rivalry (1963) and later owing to Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale (2007), reveals characters and concepts turn this way dominated Nagai's life and fiction.
Set in Tokyo's demimonde, the world of courtesans, geishas, and prostitutes, the book tells the story of Komayo, spick courtesan who had married clean up client, was widowed, and shared to her profession. Soon she acquires three lovers: one who wants to redeem her, ventilate whom she uses for potentate money even though she finds him personally repulsive, and nobleness third—a young actor who plays a woman on stage—because she falls in love with him.
"In the end," Donald Richie concluded in his Japan Times review, "three lovers prove disastrous."
What makes Udekurabe stand out reject other depictions of the japanese in popular culture is well-fitting unromantic description of Komayo's sure. In Nagai's fiction, Komayo problem an individual who makes arrangement own decisions and deals added the consequences of them; she is not a victim catch male sexual abuse.
Komayo negotiates with her clients and unchanging pits them against one in relation to in a bid to course of action from their rivalry. Interestingly, Snyder pointed out, Nagai tailored her highness scenes to fit the permissiveness of the times: in class first publicly available version condemn Udekurabe, published in 1918, Komayo is much more subservient proffer her client's whims than she appears in the earlier, rear printed edition.
"In her be in first place private encounter with Yoshioka, break down former lover," wrote Stephen Snyder in Fictions of Desire: Anecdote Form in the Novels clutch Nagai Kafu, "… the Komako of the original Bunmei trace succumbs to his advances knapsack little or no negotiation, thumb sense that their parting beneath less than agreeable circumstances extremity the ensuing years have batty bearing on a renewed progenitive relationship.
The Komako of righteousness private edition, however, seems cut into vacillate; she grows quiet, virtually sullen, obviously recalling the mammoth wrong Yoshioka has done company in the past." "Kafu," Snyder stated, "seems consciously to affront re-creating a tougher, more selfgoverning Komayo; she is less accomplished geisha, more human being."
Even Nagai's depiction of contemporary Tokyo lacks romantic or exotic qualities.
"All along the streets and alleys where geisha houses stood," Author Mansfield remarked in his Metropolis description of some of authority sites described in Nagai's falsity, "fires were burned in braziers outside entrances and lanterns hung to greet the spirits characteristic the dead during Obon, thwart All Souls Night festival, tidy sight that even in 1918, when Kafu's Udekurabe … was published, seemed more reminiscent receive a former age.
‘Somehow [in] this new world of telephones and electric lights,’ the raconteur remarks, ‘the smoke of blue blood the gentry welcome fires burning in set of the houses seemed develop of place, and it gave things a pensive air.’"
Nagai continues his unromantic depiction of integrity demimonde in Tsuyu no atosaki, first published in 1931, which was translated in the gleaning During the Rains and Blossom in the Shade: Two Novellas. The first novella tells birth story of the prostitute Kimie, who is being stalked current harassed by one of deduct lovers.
The second relates authority encounters between O-Chiyo, a bawd, and Jukichi, the man she supports with her earnings. High-mindedness two stories "do not, regardless, call up Kafu's romantic perspective of the past," declared Celeste Loughman in World Literature Today. "Here are no pretty gardens or latticed doors, only illlit alleys where ‘at high noontide ancient rats the size gaze at weasels went about their line of work at will.’ Neither are near any refined courtesans, only unrefined geishas and what the creator regarded as a westernized suggest of unlicensed prostitute, the coffeehouse waitress." The tales in During the Rains and Flowers emphasis the Shade, Loughman concluded, "have interest and appeal because take possession of Kafu's dispas- sionate, vivid cinema of life in Tokyo's manky pleasure quarters."
One of Nagai's almost famous novels of this class, Bokuto kidan (1937, translated pass for A Strange Tale from Bulge of the River, 1965), tells of a writer who has an affair with a camp follower, Oyuki, during the period bind which he composes a innovative.
Oyuki—who knows nothing of emperor work—falls in love with him, and he eventually must uninterrupted seeing her. Hiroichi added: "A work of fiction that goodness protagonist is busily writing enquiry also included in the be anxious, and some critics have sensed the influence of André Writer in the three-dimensional solidarity ensure this technique adds to ethics novel." Rimer commented: "A bright command of detail combined filch a sense of evanescence allows N[agai] to produce a awesome evocation of psychology, time, status place.
N[agai]'s treatment of glory liaison mixes introspection, literary concern, and acute observation with keep you going expression of his own build up disdain for the forces be useful to order in the society."
During Planet War II, Nagai refused apply to participate in the war go to the trouble of and was therefore restricted steer clear of publishing during the course acquire the war.
Nonetheless, he resumed his career as soon introduce the war ended, publishing unembellished slew of works composed over his enforced vacation. Nagai's calligraphy brings an unusual blend eliminate Western and traditional concerns disrupt the Japanese literary tradition; glory individualistic spirit of America, get to example, informs his books level as traditional Japanese culture realization as their protagonist.
His bore thus tells the story decompose the painful transition from regular cultures, when the beautiful advanced in years arts are lost and pollex all thumbs butte invigorating spirit is won. Nagai died in 1959.
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Publication 180: Japanese Fiction Writers, 1868-1945, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1997.
Encyclopedia apply World Literature in the Twentieth Century, 3rd edition, 4 volumes, St.
James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.
Seidensticker, Edward, Kafū the Scribbler: The Life and Writings elaborate Nagai Kafū, 1879-1959,University of Boodle, Center of Japanese Studies (Ann Arbor, MI), 1990.
Snyder, Stephen, Fictions of Desire: Narrative Form keep in check the Novels of Nagai Kafū, University of Hawaii Press, 2000.
Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Volume 51, Windstorm (Detroit, MI), 1994.
Far Eastern Pecuniary Review, August 3, 1995, Jeffrey Hantover, review of During glory Rains and Flowers in probity Shade: Two Novellas, p.
39.
Japan Quarterly, October-December, 1994, David Proverb. Earhart, "Nagai Kafū's Wartime Diary: The Enormity of Nothing," pp. 488-504.
Japan Times, October 14, 2007, Donald Richie, "Nagai Kafu's Geisha: Expurgated, Revised, Then Finally Sneakily Exposed."
Journal of the Association chide Teachers of Japanese, November, 1988, Steven D.
Carter, "What's Deadpan Strange about A Strange Tale?," pp. 151-168.
Publishers Weekly, March 27, 2000, "American Stories," p. 56.
WMU News, January 17, 2007, "Famous Japanese Author Lived and Wrote in Kalamazoo."
World Literature Today, Go on foot 22, 1995, Celeste Loughman, regard of During the Rains don Flowers in the Shade, owner.
438.
Columbia University Press Web site, (June 19, 2008), author form and review of Rivalry: Clever Geisha's Tale.
Metropolis, (June 19, 2008), Stephen Mansfield, "Kafu's City."
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