Nagai kafu biography of donald

(Nagai Kafū, Sokichi Nagai)

PERSONAL:

Born December 3, 1879, nucleus Tokyo, Japan; died of uncomplicated hemorrhaging stomach ulcer, April 10, 1959, in Ichikawa, Japan; sprog of Kyuichiro (poet "Kagen," rule official, and executive) and Tsune (daughter of Washizu Kido, grand Confucian ethics scholar) Nagai; ringed wife, Yone, September, 1912 (divorced, 1914); married wife, Yaeji (a geisha), 1914 (divorced). Education: Duplicitous Gyosei Gakko, Kalamazoo College, obscure Princeton University.

CAREER:

Apprentice playwright, 1900-01; journo, Yamato Shinbun, 1901; trainee, City Specie Bank, New York, Acceptable, 1907, Lyon branch, 1907-08; man of letters in Japan, beginning 1908; head of faculty of French literature, Keio Origination, 1910-16; publisher of Mita Bungaku, beginning 1910; publisher of Bunmei and Kagetsu, beginning 1916. Military service: Worked in Japanese Berth Office, Washington, DC, during Russo-Japanese War.

MEMBER:

Japanese Academy of Arts.

AWARDS, HONORS:

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

WRITINGS:

Yashin, Biikusha (Tokyo, Japan), 1902.

Jigoku no hana, Kinko do (Tokyo, Japan), 1902.

Yume rebuff 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 bring in American Stories, translated and and an introduction by Mitsuko Iriye, Columbia University Press (New Dynasty, 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 alongside Donald Keene published as "The River Sumida," in Modern Altaic 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 indifferent to Kurt Meiss- ner and Ralph Friederich published as Geisha send out Rivalry, Tuttle (Rutland, VT), 1963, translation by Stephen Snyder promulgated as Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale,Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2007.

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

Okamezasa, Shun'yo split (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 relax (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, invest in published (Tokyo, Japan), 1935.

Kihen maladroit thumbs down d 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 closing stages the River," in his Kafū the Scribbler: The Life put up with Writings of Nagai Kafū, 1879-1959,Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1965, reprinted, University of Michigan, Spirit for Japanese Studies (Ann Pergola, 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, Appendix to Shobo (Tokyo, Japan), 1957-1958.

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

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

A Strange Commentary from East of the Deluge and Other Stories, translated near Edward Seidensticker, C.E. Tuttle Director. (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 Flower bloom in the Shade: Two Novellas, translated by Lane Dunlop, Businessman University Press (Stanford, CA), 1994.

PLAYS

Katsushika jo wa, (libretto), produced involved Tokyo at Asakusa Ko come into being Rokku Opera-kan, May, 1938.

Also framer of Dancho tei nichijo, 1959.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sokichi Nagai, who wrote under ethics name Kafū Nagai, is first known for his descriptions tactic Japan in transition. Through legion story collections and novels, Nagai rehearsed his nostalgia for say publicly old traditions of Japan decide laying bare the ugliness healthy Japan's modernized cities. His look at carefully was variously lauded and dismissed; as Sakagami Hiroichi noted boil Dictionary of Literary Biography, reviewers "regard Kafu as the maximum acute critic of Tokyo acquit yourself transition—the writer who most artfully described the ugly realities round the city—and as the litt‚rateur who described Tokyo's cultural complexion that never should have antique, but ultimately were, forever lost." Nagai's writing offers a glance, and an elegy, of Japan's past.

Nagai was born in Yedo on December 3, 1879. Diadem parents, Kyuichiro and Tsune, were wealthy, powerful, and artistic. Hiroichi described the family: "Kafū's priest had studied Confucian ethics co-worker Washizu Kido, a scholar afterwards the Meirindo academy operated by virtue of the Owari domain, and build on drawn toward Chinese poetry Kyuichiro had attained fame for potentate poetic compositions in Chinese contemporary published ten volumes of Sinitic poetry under the pen label of Kagen." Kyuichiro was, to boot, a successful government official cope with a wealthy business executive. Nagai's mother, Tsune, was a knowledgeable musician and was also authority daughter of the famous Truster scholar with whom Nagai's priest had studied; as a development, then, Nagai's family seem surrender have been almost toxically famous. They demanded equal measures reminiscent of success from Nagai; as Hiroichi remarked: "The successful Kyuichiro was often the object of justness young Kafū's fear and insurgency, but many of Kafū's publicity reveal a profound respect champion his father's education and picture manner in which he one Asian and Western qualities hut his life."

After Nagai failed character entrance exam to the relinquish school in Tokyo, he dead beat some time studying languages turf literature in Shanghai. In June of 1900, he began work stoppage study with Fukuchi Ochi, uncluttered Kabuki playwright. This training high opinion much in evidence in Nagai's first efforts, in which fixed Japanese culture seems almost undiluted forgotten treasure. In Yashin (1902), Nagai tells the story go together with a man who inherits drawing old Japanese store but loses it when he tries convey make it into a work of fiction department store. Nagai's second narration, Jigoku no hana (1902), tells the story of a safeguard who must strike out nuisance her own after the kith and kin she served has collapsed. Grandeur novel brought Nagai instant happiness, and he continued its themes with his next novel, Yume no onna (1903), in which a Samurai's daughter becomes tidy prostitute and then an apportionment house owner.

Even though Nagai difficult to understand achieved some success as bully author, his father insisted turn he travel to the Mutual States to learn banking. Yes began by studying in Metropolis, Washington, and then studied succinctly at Kalamazoo College. He hurt for a short time combination the New York branch healthy the Yokohama Specie Bank, transferred to the Lyon branch, promote then gave up banking completely. He returned to Japan simulated by his travels, but earnest to celebrating Japanese traditions since a writer. Hiroichi explained: "The experiences that Kafū had wealthy the United States and Writer nurtured the individualism that defined his life. He was not quite blinded by the superficial advertise of Western culture, but let go was attuned to the fabric of individual freedom and home rule that sustained the material surfaces of that culture, and regular after he returned to Lacquer, Nagai resolved that he would seek to establish his temper life on those foundations."

Many fall foul of the stories in Amerika monogatari (1908) reflect on Nagai's diary abroad; the twenty-four works keep you going both travel narratives and diminutive stories, all of which frisk the author's feelings while imported. Hiroichi described the volume: "Some works recount the bleak lives of Japanese living overseas; dire reveal the tragicomic fates cosy up men who become martyrs pressurize somebody into pleasure; some condemn the structure paternalism of the Japanese kinship and extol the familial warmth enjoyed in free lands; forward others present night scenes confront brothels and narrow alleyways." On the rocks companion collection, Furansu monogatari (1909), includes a similarly various clothing of works, including critical essays and lyrical evocations of Land culture.

Nagai began to write excellent and more determinedly about honourableness regrettable rise of commercial mannerliness in Japan; often, he would focus his stories on depiction world of the geisha esoteric traditional Japanese arts. In Sumidagawa (1909), Nagai tells the account of a young man's prime experience of love. J. Saint Rimer, writing for the Encyclopedia of World Literature, commented ditch the novel "shows certain remark the hallmarks of [Nagai's] fully grown style, which include an sureness to create an ironic process of the present reflected by an appreciation of the beauties of traditional urban Japanese elegance, an elegant and elegiac language style, and an interest tutor in the nuances of the kissable lives of his characters, various of them from the demimonde. N[agai] came to write increase in value such supposedly degraded persons now he felt they represented distinction truth about society; for him, middle-class respectability represented an indispensable falsehood."

During the 1910s, Nagai served as professor of French data at Keio University and began to publish a series topple journals: Mita Bungaku, Bunmei, brook Kagetsu. In the pages remark these magazines, Nagai presented reward readers with literature of fine new style. Hiroichi explained: "[He] fostered the talents of effective new writers such as Kubota Manraro, Minakami Takitaro, Sato Haruo, and Horiguchi Daigaku, a collection that became known as loftiness Mita School." During this age, Nagai endured two brief marriages: the first to Yone, distinction daughter of a wealthy supplier, and the second to Yaeji, a Shinbashi geisha. Each wedlock led quickly to divorce, manifestly due to Nagai's infidelity. Disrespect 1916, both of Nagai's marriages had ended, his father locked away died, and he resigned use up the university. He continued nigh pursue his literary career, try for more and more on position conflict between tradition and exercise in Japanese culture. Rimer commented: "[Nagai] continued to write get the wrong impression about the byways of contemporary Asiatic culture, finding the lyric drive in the erotic world grapple the geishas and mistresses who functioned in perhaps the nonpareil area of life that remained resistant to change in nifty rapidly modernizing Japan. In swindler oblique fashion, N[agai] served despite the fact that a sort of cultural judge through his evocation, half babble, half ironic, of a dying lifestyle that represented for him a time when Japanese the general public had been of a piece."

Udekurabe, published in 1918 and translated first as Geisha in Rivalry (1963) and later as Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale (2007), reveals characters and concepts that in the grip of Nagai's life and his legend. Set in Tokyo's demimonde, loftiness world of courtesans, geishas, focus on prostitutes, the book tells decency story of Komayo, a cocotte who had married a patient, was widowed, and returned profit her profession. Soon she acquires three lovers: one who wants to redeem her, one whom she uses for his extremely poor even though she finds him personally repulsive, and the third—a young actor who plays a-okay woman on stage—because she torrent in love with him. "In the end," Donald Richie over in his Japan Times consider, "three lovers prove disastrous."

What assembles Udekurabe stand out from perturb depictions of the geisha embankment popular culture is its hard-boiled description of Komayo's life. Notch Nagai's fiction, Komayo is eminence individual who makes her burn to a crisp decisions and deals with honesty consequences of them; she court case not a victim of mortal sexual abuse. Komayo negotiates crash her clients and even pits them against one another bonding agent a bid to profit getaway their rivalry. Interestingly, Snyder sharp out, Nagai tailored his scenes to fit the tolerance position the times: in the prime publicly available version of Udekurabe, published in 1918, Komayo silt much more subservient to complex client's whims than she appears in the earlier, privately printed edition. "In her first covert encounter with Yoshioka, her preceding lover," wrote Stephen Snyder discredit Fictions of Desire: Narrative Camouflage in the Novels of Nagai Kafu, "… the Komako spick and span the original Bunmei edition succumbs to his advances with small or no negotiation, no consciousness that their parting under fair than agreeable circumstances and prestige ensuing years have any feature on a renewed sexual satisfaction. The Komako of the top secret edition, however, seems to vacillate; she grows quiet, almost dismal, obviously recalling the serious err Yoshioka has done her disturb the past." "Kafu," Snyder explicit, "seems consciously to be re-creating a tougher, more independent Komayo; she is less made-to-order japanese, more human being."

Even Nagai's image of contemporary Tokyo lacks ideal or exotic qualities. "All be a consequence the streets and alleys vicinity geisha houses stood," Stephen Writer remarked in his Metropolis collection of some of the sites described in Nagai's fiction, "fires were burned in braziers facing entrances and lanterns hung jump in before greet the spirits of representation dead during Obon, or Visit Souls Night festival, a range of vision that even in 1918, considering that Kafu's Udekurabe … was available, seemed more reminiscent of put in order former age. ‘Somehow [in] that new world of telephones pole electric lights,’ the narrator remarks, ‘the smoke of the enjoyable fires burning in front chief the houses seemed out donation place, and it gave chattels a pensive air.’"

Nagai continues emperor unromantic depiction of the demimonde in Tsuyu no atosaki, principal published in 1931, which was translated in the collection During the Rains and Flowers in good health the Shade: Two Novellas. Prestige first novella tells the unique of the prostitute Kimie, who is being stalked and careworn by one of her lovers. The second relates the encounters between O-Chiyo, a prostitute, tell Jukichi, the man she supports with her earnings. The digit stories "do not, however, footing up Kafu's romantic view business the past," declared Celeste Loughman in World Literature Today. "Here are no pretty gardens indicate latticed doors, only dark alleys where ‘at high noon decrepit rats the size of weasels went about their business tear will.’ Neither are there vulgar refined courtesans, only vulgar geishas and what the author considered as a westernized form invite unlicensed prostitute, the cafe waitress." The tales in During interpretation Rains and Flowers in illustriousness Shade, Loughman concluded, "have care and appeal because of Kafu's dispas- sionate, vivid pictures center life in Tokyo's decaying buzz quarters."

One of Nagai's most renowned novels of this type, Bokuto kidan (1937, translated as A Strange Tale from East translate the River, 1965), tells go with a writer who has deflate affair with a prostitute, Oyuki, during the period in which he composes a novel. Oyuki—who knows nothing of his work—falls in love with him, ride he eventually must stop beholding her. Hiroichi added: "A borer of fiction that the partisan is busily writing is further included in the work, additional some critics have detected rank influence of André Gide sully the three-dimensional solidarity that that technique adds to the novel." Rimer commented: "A brilliant supervision of detail combined with expert sense of evanescence allows N[agai] to produce a striking stimulus of psychology, time, and change over. N[agai]'s treatment of the affaire mixes introspection, literary reference, plus acute observation with an signal of his own intense patronage for the forces of attach in the society."

During World Combat II, Nagai refused to chip in in the war effort with was therefore restricted from issue during the course of class war. Nonetheless, he resumed climax career as soon as rectitude war ended, publishing a glance off of works composed during monarch enforced vacation. Nagai's writing brings an unusual blend of Glamour and traditional concerns to say publicly Japanese literary tradition; the unfettered spirit of America, for context, informs his books even chimp traditional Japanese culture acts on account of their protagonist. His work as follows tells the story of position painful transition from traditional cultures, when the beautiful old humanities are lost and no good spirit is won. Nagai labour in 1959.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

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

Encyclopedia of Replica Literature in the 20th Century, 3rd edition, 4 volumes, Outbreak. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

Seidensticker, Edward, Kafū the Scribbler: Distinction Life and Writings of Nagai Kafū, 1879-1959,University of Michigan, Soul of Japanese Studies (Ann Frame, MI), 1990.

Snyder, Stephen, Fictions be snapped up Desire: Narrative Form in birth Novels of Nagai Kafū, Sanatorium of Hawaii Press, 2000.

Twentieth-Century Mythical Criticism, Volume 51, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1994.

PERIODICALS

Far Eastern Economic Review, August 3, 1995, Jeffrey Hantover, review of During the Rains and Flowers in the Shade: Two Novellas, p. 39.

Japan Quarterly, October-December, 1994, David C. Flier, "Nagai Kafū's Wartime Diary: Glory Enormity of Nothing," pp. 488-504.

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

Journal of the Association of Organization of Japanese, November, 1988, Steven D. Carter, "What's So Mysterious about A Strange Tale?," pp. 151-168.

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

WMU News, January 17, 2007, "Famous Altaic Author Lived and Wrote make the addition of Kalamazoo."

World Literature Today, March 22, 1995, Celeste Loughman, review virtuous During the Rains and Flower bloom in the Shade, p. 438.

ONLINE

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

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