Nagai kafu biography of donald

(Nagai Kafū, Sokichi Nagai)

PERSONAL:

Born December 3, 1879, in Tokyo, Japan; died of a hemorrhaging stomach heavy, April 10, 1959, in Ichikawa, Japan; son of Kyuichiro (poet "Kagen," command official, and executive) and Tsune (daughter of Washizu Kido, a Confucian morals scholar) Nagai; married wife, Yone, Sep, 1912 (divorced, 1914); married wife, Yaeji (a geisha), 1914 (divorced). Education: Trying Gyosei Gakko, Kalamazoo College, and University University.

CAREER:

Apprentice playwright, 1900-01; correspondent, Yamato Shinbun, 1901; trainee, Yokohama Specie Bank, Contemporary York, NY, 1907, Lyon branch, 1907-08; writer in Japan, beginning 1908; associate lecturer of French literature, Keio University, 1910-16; publisher of Mita Bungaku, beginning 1910; publisher of Bunmei and Kagetsu, guidelines 1916. Military service: Worked in Nipponese Legation Office, Washington, DC, during Russo-Japanese War.

MEMBER:

Japanese Academy of Arts.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Imperial National Medal; Bunka Kunsho (Order of Culture), 1952.

WRITINGS:

Yashin, Biikusha (Tokyo, Japan), 1902.

Jigoku clumsy hana, Kinko do (Tokyo, Japan), 1902.

Yume no onna, Shinseisha (Tokyo, Japan), 1903.

Joyu Nana, Shinseisha (Tokyo, Japan), 1903.

Koi concurrence yaiba, Shinseisha (Tokyo, Japan), 1903.

Amerika monogatari, Hakubunkan (Tokyo, Japan), 1908, Fukutake Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1983, English translation publicised as American Stories, translated and best an introduction by Mitsuko Iriye, Town University Press (New York, 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 by Donald Keene published as "The River Sumida," in Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, edited by Donald Keene, Grove Squash (New York, NY), 1965.

Reisho, Sakura Shobo (Tokyo, Japan), 1910.

Botan no kyaku, Momiyama Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1911.

Ko cha thumb 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 by Kurt Meiss- ner and Ralph Friederich published primate Geisha in Rivalry, Tuttle (Rutland, VT), 1963, translation by Stephen Snyder promulgated as Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale,Columbia Institute Press (New York, NY), 2007.

Dancho tei zakko, Momiyama Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1918.

Okamezasa, Shun'yo do (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 on time (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 fair wa, Shun'yo do (Tokyo, Japan), 1924.

Kafū bunko, Shun'yo do (Tokyo, Japan), 1926.

Tsuyu no atosaki, Chu o Koronsha (Tokyo, Japan), 1931, translation by Lane Dunlop published as During the Rains,Stanford Order of the day Press (Stanford, CA), 1994.

Kafū zuihitsu, Chu o Koronsha (Tokyo, Japan), 1933.

Fuyu inept hae, privately published (Tokyo, Japan), 1935.

Kihen no ki, Seito sha (Tokyo, Japan), 1936.

Bokuto kitan, Iwanami Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1937, translation by Edward G. Seidensticker published as "A Strange Tale shake off East of the River," in consummate Kafū the Scribbler: The Life survive Writings of Nagai Kafū, 1879-1959,Stanford Asylum Press (Stanford, CA), 1965, reprinted, Sanatorium of Michigan, Center for Japanese Studies (Ann Arbor, 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 inept 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 lowdown Koronsha (Tokyo, Japan), 1950.

Ratai, Chu ormation Koronsha (Tokyo, Japan), 1954.

Katsushika koyomi, Mainichi Shinbunsha (Tokyo, Japan), 1956.

Azumabashi, Chu gen Koronsha (Tokyo, Japan), 1957.

Nagai Kafū nikki, To to Shobo (Tokyo, Japan), 1957-1958.

Kafū zenshu, 28 volumes, Iwanami Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1962-1965.

Udekurabe, Kadokawa Shoten (Tokyo, Japan), 1969.

A Strange Tale from East endowment the River and Other Stories, translated by Edward Seidensticker, C.E. Tuttle Outward show. (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, Stanford University Company (Stanford, CA), 1994.

PLAYS

Katsushika jo wa, (libretto), produced in Tokyo at Asakusa Ko en Rokku Opera-kan, May, 1938.

Also framer of Dancho tei nichijo, 1959.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sokichi Nagai, who wrote under the name Kafū Nagai, is best known for culminate descriptions of Japan in transition. As a consequence numerous story collections and novels, Nagai rehearsed his nostalgia for the a mixture of traditions of Japan while laying free the ugliness of Japan's modernized cities. His work was variously lauded station dismissed; as Sakagami Hiroichi noted manifestation Dictionary of Literary Biography, reviewers "regard Kafu as the most acute connoisseur of Tokyo in transition—the writer who most perspicaciously described the ugly realities of the city—and as the author who described Tokyo's cultural features renounce never should have been, but at long last were, forever lost." Nagai's writing offers a glimpse, and an elegy, accomplish Japan's past.

Nagai was born in Tokio on December 3, 1879. His parents, Kyuichiro and Tsune, were wealthy, sturdy, and artistic. Hiroichi described the family: "Kafū's father had studied Confucian integrity with Washizu Kido, a scholar draw on the Meirindo academy operated by rendering Owari domain, and being drawn so as to approach Chinese poetry Kyuichiro had attained celebrity for his poetic compositions in Asian and published ten volumes of Asiatic poetry under the pen name identical Kagen." Kyuichiro was, moreover, a flourishing government official and a wealthy craft executive. Nagai's mother, Tsune, was uncomplicated proficient musician and was also dignity daughter of the famous Confucian bookworm with whom Nagai's father had studied; as a group, then, Nagai's descendants seem to have been almost toxically illustrious. They demanded equal measures livestock success from Nagai; as Hiroichi remarked: "The successful Kyuichiro was often integrity object of the young Kafū's horror and rebellion, but many of Kafū's writings reveal a profound respect put his father's education and the nature in which he combined Asian leading Western qualities in his life."

After Nagai failed the entrance exam to magnanimity top school in Tokyo, he fagged out some time studying languages and learning in Shanghai. In June of 1900, he began to study with Fukuchi Ochi, a Kabuki playwright. This devotion is much in evidence in Nagai's first efforts, in which traditional Asiatic culture seems almost a forgotten cache. In Yashin (1902), Nagai tells primacy story of a man who inherits an old Japanese store but loses it when he tries to brand name it into a newfangled department set aside. Nagai's second novel, Jigoku no hana (1902), tells the story of well-ordered governess who must strike out admirer her own after the family she served has collapsed. The novel debasement Nagai instant success, and he extended its themes with his next new, Yume no onna (1903), in which a Samurai's daughter becomes a streetwalker and then an assignation house owner.

Even though Nagai had achieved some ensue as an author, his father insisted that he travel to the Combined States to learn banking. He began by studying in Tacoma, Washington, countryside then studied briefly at Kalamazoo School. He worked for a short pause at the New York branch get the picture the Yokohama Specie Bank, transferred make somebody's day the Lyon branch, and then gave up banking altogether. He returned launch an attack Japan influenced by his travels, nevertheless dedicated to celebrating Japanese traditions orang-utan a writer. Hiroichi explained: "The reminiscences annals that Kafū had in the Mutual States and France nurtured the individuality that characterized his life. He was not blinded by the superficial brag of Western culture, but he was attuned to the foundations of evident freedom and independence that sustained grandeur material surfaces of that culture, brook even after he returned to Adorn, Nagai resolved that he would test to establish his own life hesitation those foundations."

Many of the stories blessed Amerika monogatari (1908) reflect on Nagai's experiences abroad; the twenty-four works involve both travel narratives and short storied, all of which explore the author's feelings while overseas. Hiroichi described loftiness volume: "Some works recount the stark lives of Japanese living overseas; tedious reveal the tragicomic fates of general public who become martyrs to pleasure; harsh condemn the feudal paternalism of representation Japanese family and extol the housekeeper love enjoyed in free lands; deed others present night scenes of brothels and narrow alleyways." A companion egg on, Furansu monogatari (1909), includes a alike various assortment of works, including fault-finding essays and lyrical evocations of Gallic culture.

Nagai began to write more existing more determinedly about the regrettable encompass of commercial culture in Japan; ofttimes, he would focus his stories post the world of the geisha humbling traditional Japanese arts. In Sumidagawa (1909), Nagai tells the story of simple young man's first experience of like. J. Thomas Rimer, writing for ethics Encyclopedia of World Literature, commented deviate the novel "shows certain of prestige hallmarks of [Nagai's] mature style, which include an ability to create enterprise ironic view of the present mirrored through an appreciation of the beauties of traditional urban Japanese culture, archetypal elegant and elegiac prose style, cranium an interest in the nuances make stronger the erotic lives of his notating, many of them from the demimonde. N[agai] came to write about much supposedly degraded persons because he matte they represented the truth about society; for him, middle-class respectability represented stop off essential falsehood."

During the 1910s, Nagai served as professor of French literature fake Keio University and began to broadcast a series of journals: Mita Bungaku, Bunmei, and Kagetsu. In the pages of these magazines, Nagai presented monarch readers with literature of a different style. Hiroichi explained: "[He] fostered dignity talents of influential new writers much as Kubota Manraro, Minakami Takitaro, Sato Haruo, and Horiguchi Daigaku, a agency that became known as the Mita School." During this period, Nagai endured two brief marriages: the first pact Yone, the daughter of a rich merchant, and the second to Yaeji, a Shinbashi geisha. Each marriage emancipated quickly to divorce, apparently due run into Nagai's infidelity. By 1916, both time off Nagai's marriages had ended, his priest had died, and he resigned break the university. He continued to hoof marks his literary career, focusing more essential more on the conflict between practice and change in Japanese culture. Rimester commented: "[Nagai] continued to write run the byways of contemporary Japanese charm, finding the lyric impetus in say publicly erotic world of the geishas view mistresses who functioned in perhaps honourableness only area of life that remained resistant to change in a immediately modernizing Japan. In an oblique direction, N[agai] served as a sort holiday cultural critic through his evocation, bisection lyrical, half ironic, of a fading lifestyle that represented for him graceful time when Japanese culture had back number of a piece."

Udekurabe, published in 1918 and translated first as Geisha necessitate Rivalry (1963) and later as Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale (2007), reveals notating and concepts that dominated Nagai's existence and his fiction. Set in Tokyo's demimonde, the world of courtesans, geishas, and prostitutes, the book tells righteousness story of Komayo, a courtesan who had married a client, was widowed, and returned to her profession. Before long she acquires three lovers: one who wants to redeem her, one whom she uses for his money securely though she finds him personally repugnant, and the third—a young actor who plays a woman on stage—because she falls in love with him. "In the end," Donald Richie concluded take away his Japan Times review, "three lovers prove disastrous."

What makes Udekurabe stand finished from other depictions of the nipponese in popular culture is its realistic description of Komayo's life. In Nagai's fiction, Komayo is an individual who makes her own decisions and deals with the consequences of them; she is not a victim of person sexual abuse. Komayo negotiates with turn one\'s back on clients and even pits them argue with one another in a bid disparagement profit from their rivalry. Interestingly, Snyder pointed out, Nagai tailored his scenes to fit the tolerance of class times: in the first publicly vacant version of Udekurabe, published in 1918, Komayo is much more subservient envisage her client's whims than she appears in the earlier, privately printed run riot. "In her first private encounter comprehend Yoshioka, her former lover," wrote Author Snyder in Fictions of Desire: Fiction Form in the Novels of Nagai Kafu, "… the Komako of greatness original Bunmei edition succumbs to sovereign advances with little or no contract, no sense that their parting inferior to less than agreeable circumstances and greatness ensuing years have any bearing faintness a renewed sexual relationship. The Komako of the private edition, however, seems to vacillate; she grows quiet, mock sullen, obviously recalling the serious misjudge Yoshioka has done her in nobleness past." "Kafu," Snyder stated, "seems knowingly to be re-creating a tougher, go into detail independent Komayo; she is less masterly geisha, more human being."

Even Nagai's representation of contemporary Tokyo lacks romantic look after exotic qualities. "All along the streets and alleys where geisha houses stood," Stephen Mansfield remarked in his Metropolis description of some of the sites described in Nagai's fiction, "fires were burned in braziers outside entrances obtain lanterns hung to greet the intoxicant of the dead during Obon, resolve All Souls Night festival, a go into hiding that even in 1918, when Kafu's Udekurabe … was published, seemed make more complicated reminiscent of a former age. ‘Somehow [in] this new world of telephones and electric lights,’ the narrator remarks, ‘the smoke of the welcome fires burning in front of the castles seemed out of place, and live gave things a pensive air.’"

Nagai continues his unromantic depiction of the demimonde in Tsuyu no atosaki, first publicized in 1931, which was translated drag the collection During the Rains bid Flowers in the Shade: Two Novellas. The first novella tells the rebel of the prostitute Kimie, who not bad being stalked and harassed by helpful of her lovers. The second relates the encounters between O-Chiyo, a strumpet, and Jukichi, the man she supports with her earnings. The two chimerical "do not, however, call up Kafu's romantic view of the past," proclaimed Celeste Loughman in World Literature Today. "Here are no pretty gardens be a sign of latticed doors, only dark alleys site ‘at high noon ancient rats authority size of weasels went about their business at will.’ Neither are down any refined courtesans, only vulgar geishas and what the author regarded brand a westernized form of unlicensed call-girl, the cafe waitress." The tales confine During the Rains and Flowers moniker the Shade, Loughman concluded, "have put under a spell and appeal because of Kafu's dispas- sionate, vivid pictures of life draw Tokyo's decaying pleasure quarters."

One of Nagai's most famous novels of this image, Bokuto kidan (1937, translated as A Strange Tale from East of glory River, 1965), tells of a hack who has an affair with spruce prostitute, Oyuki, during the period sketch which he composes a novel. Oyuki—who knows nothing of his work—falls tear love with him, and he ultimately must stop seeing her. Hiroichi added: "A work of fiction that grandeur protagonist is busily writing is further included in the work, and several critics have detected the influence appreciated André Gide in the three-dimensional community of interest that this technique adds to prestige novel." Rimer commented: "A brilliant leading of detail combined with a diplomacy of evanescence allows N[agai] to shut yourself away a striking evocation of psychology, lifetime, and place. N[agai]'s treatment of integrity liaison mixes introspection, literary reference, leading acute observation with an expression reinforce his own intense disdain for prestige forces of order in the society."

During World War II, Nagai refused should participate in the war effort tolerate was therefore restricted from publishing cloth the course of the war. Withal, he resumed his career as in the near future as the war ended, publishing grand slew of works composed during dominion enforced vacation. Nagai's writing brings proposal unusual blend of Western and stock concerns to the Japanese literary tradition; the individualistic spirit of America, sustenance example, informs his books even variety traditional Japanese culture acts as their protagonist. His work thus tells description story of the painful transition munch through traditional cultures, when the beautiful sucker arts are lost and no tonic spirit is won. Nagai died embankment 1959.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Dictionary of Literate Biography, Volume 180: Japanese Fiction Writers, 1868-1945, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1997.

Encyclopedia bear witness World Literature in the 20th Century, 3rd edition, 4 volumes, St. Crook Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

Seidensticker, Edward, Kafū the Scribbler: The Life and Propaganda of Nagai Kafū, 1879-1959,University of Newmarket, Center of Japanese Studies (Ann Frame, MI), 1990.

Snyder, Stephen, Fictions of Desire: Narrative Form in the Novels dressing-down Nagai Kafū, University of Hawaii Squash, 2000.

Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, Volume 51, Hurricane (Detroit, MI), 1994.

PERIODICALS

Far Eastern Economic Review, August 3, 1995, Jeffrey Hantover, analysis of During the Rains and Floret in the Shade: Two Novellas, proprietor. 39.

Japan Quarterly, October-December, 1994, David Apothegm. Earhart, "Nagai Kafū's Wartime Diary: Character Enormity of Nothing," pp. 488-504.

Japan Times, October 14, 2007, Donald Richie, "Nagai Kafu's Geisha: Expurgated, Revised, Then Lastly Fully Exposed."

Journal of the Association regard Teachers of Japanese, November, 1988, Steven D. Carter, "What's So Strange be conscious of A Strange Tale?," pp. 151-168.

Publishers Weekly, March 27, 2000, "American Stories," owner. 56.

WMU News, January 17, 2007, "Famous Japanese Author Lived and Wrote barred enclosure Kalamazoo."

World Literature Today, March 22, 1995, Celeste Loughman, review of During leadership Rains and Flowers in the Shade, p. 438.

ONLINE

Columbia University Press Web site, (June 19, 2008), author profile most important review of Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale.

Metropolis, (June 19, 2008), Stephen Mansfield, "Kafu's City."