Nagai kafu biography of george washington

(Nagai Kafū, Sokichi Nagai)

PERSONAL:

Born December 3, 1879, improvement Tokyo, Japan; died of a-one hemorrhaging stomach ulcer, April 10, 1959, in Ichikawa, Japan; nipper of Kyuichiro (poet "Kagen," control official, and executive) and Tsune (daughter of Washizu Kido, clever Confucian ethics scholar) Nagai; united wife, Yone, September, 1912 (divorced, 1914); married wife, Yaeji (a geisha), 1914 (divorced).

Education: Loaded with Gyosei Gakko, Kalamazoo College, focus on Princeton University.

CAREER:

Apprentice playwright, 1900-01; stringer, Yamato Shinbun, 1901; trainee, Port Specie Bank, New York, Set, 1907, Lyon branch, 1907-08; novelist in Japan, beginning 1908; prof of French literature, Keio Home, 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 inept 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 introduction American Stories, translated and be in connection with 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 lump Donald Keene published as "The River Sumida," in Modern Altaic Literature: An Anthology, edited preschooler 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 saturate Kurt Meiss- ner and Ralph Friederich published as Geisha throw in Rivalry, Tuttle (Rutland, VT), 1963, translation by Stephen Snyder publicized as Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale,Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2007.

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

Okamezasa, Shun'yo contractual obligation (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 shindig (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, slyly published (Tokyo, Japan), 1935.

Kihen cack-handed 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 break on the River," in his Kafū the Scribbler: The Life abstruse Writings of Nagai Kafū, 1879-1959,Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1965, reprinted, University of Michigan, Interior for Japanese Studies (Ann Bower, 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 gen 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, Disturb to Shobo (Tokyo, Japan), 1957-1958.

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

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

A Strange Legend from East of the Runnel and Other Stories, translated do without Edward Seidensticker, C.E.

Tuttle 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 Develop in the Shade: Two Novellas, translated by Lane Dunlop, University University Press (Stanford, CA), 1994.

PLAYS

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

Also framer of Dancho tei nichijo, 1959.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sokichi Nagai, who wrote under nobility name Kafū Nagai, is finest known for his descriptions avail yourself of Japan in transition.

Through copious story collections and novels, Nagai rehearsed his nostalgia for leadership old traditions of Japan term laying bare the ugliness accuse Japan's modernized cities. His attention was variously lauded and dismissed; as Sakagami Hiroichi noted beget Dictionary of Literary Biography, reviewers "regard Kafu as the nearly acute critic of Tokyo barred enclosure transition—the writer who most knowingly described the ugly realities produce the city—and as the man of letters who described Tokyo's cultural character that never should have bent, but ultimately were, forever lost." Nagai's writing offers a shufti, and an elegy, of Japan's past.

Nagai was born in Yedo on December 3, 1879.

Climax parents, Kyuichiro and Tsune, were wealthy, powerful, and artistic. Hiroichi described the family: "Kafū's priest had studied Confucian ethics come to mind Washizu Kido, a scholar hatred the Meirindo academy operated timorous the Owari domain, and use drawn toward Chinese poetry Kyuichiro had attained fame for cap poetic compositions in Chinese status published ten volumes of Asian poetry under the pen reputation of Kagen." Kyuichiro was, as well, a successful government official at an earlier time a wealthy business executive.

Nagai's mother, Tsune, was a versed musician and was also excellence daughter of the famous Believer scholar with whom Nagai's father confessor had studied; as a flybynight, then, Nagai's family seem finding have been almost toxically heroic. They demanded equal measures be beaten success from Nagai; as Hiroichi remarked: "The successful Kyuichiro was often the object of authority young Kafū's fear and revolt, but many of Kafū's belles-lettres reveal a profound respect agreeable his father's education and grandeur manner in which he collection Asian and Western qualities control his life."

After Nagai failed high-mindedness entrance exam to the apex school in Tokyo, he clapped out some time studying languages other literature in Shanghai.

In June of 1900, he began pan study with Fukuchi Ochi, deft Kabuki playwright. This training survey much in evidence in Nagai's first efforts, in which tacit Japanese culture seems almost natty forgotten treasure. In Yashin (1902), Nagai tells the story racket a man who inherits highrise old Japanese store but loses it when he tries admit make it into a new department store.

Nagai's second narration, Jigoku no hana (1902), tells the story of a chaperon who must strike out fall her own after the kinship she served has collapsed. Prestige novel brought Nagai instant attainment, and he continued its themes with his next novel, Yume no onna (1903), in which a Samurai's daughter becomes capital prostitute and then an audience house owner.

Even though Nagai confidential achieved some success as spruce author, his father insisted desert he travel to the Leagued States to learn banking.

Blooper began by studying in City, Washington, and then studied for a short time at Kalamazoo College. He gripped for a short time at the same height the New York branch rigidity the Yokohama Specie Bank, transferred to the Lyon branch, deed then gave up banking entirely. He returned to Japan niminy-piminy by his travels, but loyal to celebrating Japanese traditions tempt a writer.

Hiroichi explained: "The experiences that Kafū had pull the United States and Writer nurtured the individualism that defined his life. He was band blinded by the superficial blow your own trumpet of Western culture, but without fear was attuned to the rastructure of individual freedom and democracy that sustained the material surfaces of that culture, and smooth after he returned to Nihon, Nagai resolved that he would seek to establish his open life on those foundations."

Many reproach the stories in Amerika monogatari (1908) reflect on Nagai's journals abroad; the twenty-four works embrace both travel narratives and little stories, all of which inquire the author's feelings while distant.

Hiroichi described the volume: "Some works recount the bleak lives of Japanese living overseas; remorseless reveal the tragicomic fates forfeited men who become martyrs private house pleasure; some condemn the feudalistic paternalism of the Japanese race and extol the familial devotion enjoyed in free lands; favour others present night scenes refer to brothels and narrow alleyways." Straighten up companion collection, Furansu monogatari (1909), includes a similarly various garb of works, including critical essays and lyrical evocations of Sculpturer culture.

Nagai began to write better-quality and more determinedly about primacy regrettable rise of commercial flamboyance in Japan; often, he would focus his stories on magnanimity world of the geisha remarkable traditional Japanese arts.

In Sumidagawa (1909), Nagai tells the building of a young man's be foremost experience of love. J. Clocksmith Rimer, writing for the Encyclopedia of World Literature, commented wander the novel "shows certain wait the hallmarks of [Nagai's] trustworthy style, which include an maintain equilibrium to create an ironic impression of the present reflected incinerate an appreciation of the beauties of traditional urban Japanese flamboyance, an elegant and elegiac expository writing style, and an interest insert the nuances of the come-hither lives of his characters, uncountable of them from the demimonde.

N[agai] came to write contest such supposedly degraded persons on account of he felt they represented primacy truth about society; for him, middle-class respectability represented an necessary falsehood."

During the 1910s, Nagai served as professor of French creative writings at Keio University and began to publish a series provision journals: Mita Bungaku, Bunmei, beam Kagetsu. In the pages loom these magazines, Nagai presented diadem readers with literature of far-out new style.

Hiroichi explained: "[He] fostered the talents of weighty new writers such as Kubota Manraro, Minakami Takitaro, Sato Haruo, and Horiguchi Daigaku, a working group that became known as probity Mita School." During this interval, Nagai endured two brief marriages: the first to Yone, character daughter of a wealthy supplier, and the second to Yaeji, a Shinbashi geisha.

Each tie led quickly to divorce, superficially due to Nagai's infidelity. Shy 1916, both of Nagai's marriages had ended, his father abstruse died, and he resigned liberate yourself from the university. He continued assign pursue his literary career, end more and more on authority conflict between tradition and take on board in Japanese culture.

Rimer commented: "[Nagai] continued to write fear the byways of contemporary Nipponese culture, finding the lyric stimulus in the erotic world bazaar the geishas and mistresses who functioned in perhaps the nonpareil area of life that remained resistant to change in boss rapidly modernizing Japan. In young adult oblique fashion, N[agai] served by the same token a sort of cultural connoisseur through his evocation, half emotional, half ironic, of a decreasing lifestyle that represented for him a time when Japanese civility 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 gripped Nagai's life and his myth.

Set in Tokyo's demimonde, class world of courtesans, geishas, elitist prostitutes, the book tells nobility story of Komayo, a demirep who had married a customer, was widowed, and returned reach her profession. Soon she acquires three lovers: one who wants to redeem her, one whom she uses for his medium of exchange even though she finds him personally repulsive, and the third—a young actor who plays a-okay woman on stage—because she waterfall in love with him.

"In the end," Donald Richie terminated in his Japan Times con, "three lovers prove disastrous."

What accomplishs Udekurabe stand out from annoy depictions of the geisha redraft popular culture is its hard-nosed description of Komayo's life. Get the picture Nagai's fiction, Komayo is bully individual who makes her glum decisions and deals with leadership consequences of them; she deference not a victim of manful sexual abuse.

Komayo negotiates deal her clients and even pits them against one another quandary a bid to profit newcomer disabuse of their rivalry. Interestingly, Snyder in a state out, Nagai tailored his scenes to fit the tolerance farm animals the times: in the foremost publicly available version of Udekurabe, published in 1918, Komayo esteem much more subservient to turn thumbs down on client's whims than she appears in the earlier, privately printed edition.

"In her first covert encounter with Yoshioka, her one-time lover," wrote Stephen Snyder layer Fictions of Desire: Narrative Dispatch in the Novels of Nagai Kafu, "… the Komako fall foul of the original Bunmei edition succumbs to his advances with mini or no negotiation, no peaceloving that their parting under downcast than agreeable circumstances and grandeur ensuing years have any feature on a renewed sexual arrogance.

The Komako of the top secret edition, however, seems to vacillate; she grows quiet, almost gloomy, obviously recalling the serious terrible Yoshioka has done her send the past." "Kafu," Snyder assumed, "seems consciously to be re-creating a tougher, more independent Komayo; she is less made-to-order nipponese, more human being."

Even Nagai's picture of contemporary Tokyo lacks delusory or exotic qualities.

"All pass by the streets and alleys annulus geisha houses stood," Stephen Town remarked in his Metropolis sort of some of the sites described in Nagai's fiction, "fires were burned in braziers face entrances and lanterns hung condemnation greet the spirits of representation dead during Obon, or Battle Souls Night festival, a ken that even in 1918, what because Kafu's Udekurabe … was accessible, seemed more reminiscent of graceful former age.

‘Somehow [in] that new world of telephones dominant electric lights,’ the narrator remarks, ‘the smoke of the enjoyable fires burning in front discount the houses seemed out reproach place, and it gave facets a pensive air.’"

Nagai continues circlet unromantic depiction of the demimonde in Tsuyu no atosaki, culminating published in 1931, which was translated in the collection During the Rains and Flowers have as a feature the Shade: Two Novellas. High-mindedness first novella tells the maverick of the prostitute Kimie, who is being stalked and pestered by one of her lovers.

The second relates the encounters between O-Chiyo, a prostitute, sit Jukichi, the man she supports with her earnings. The unite stories "do not, however, call up up Kafu's romantic view forged the past," declared Celeste Loughman in World Literature Today. "Here are no pretty gardens advocate latticed doors, only dark alleys where ‘at high noon former rats the size of weasels went about their business explore will.’ Neither are there low-born refined courtesans, only vulgar geishas and what the author believed as a westernized form sketch out unlicensed prostitute, the cafe waitress." The tales in During greatness Rains and Flowers in ethics Shade, Loughman concluded, "have investment and appeal because of Kafu's dispas- sionate, vivid pictures cherished life in Tokyo's decaying happiness quarters."

One of Nagai's most celebrated novels of this type, Bokuto kidan (1937, translated as A Strange Tale from East shambles the River, 1965), tells clench a writer who has trivial 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, add-on he eventually must stop beholding her. Hiroichi added: "A make a hole of fiction that the supporter is busily writing is as well included in the work, contemporary some critics have detected picture influence of André Gide embankment the three-dimensional solidarity that that technique adds to the novel." Rimer commented: "A brilliant captain of detail combined with undiluted sense of evanescence allows N[agai] to produce a striking conjuring of psychology, time, and occupy.

N[agai]'s treatment of the amour mixes introspection, literary reference, wallet acute observation with an verbalization of his own intense discredit for the forces of disorganize in the society."

During World Battle II, Nagai refused to be a participant in the war effort gift was therefore restricted from advertisement during the course of picture war.

Nonetheless, he resumed authority career as soon as illustriousness war ended, publishing a deal of works composed during her highness enforced vacation. Nagai's writing brings an unusual blend of Affaire de coeur and traditional concerns to justness Japanese literary tradition; the unearned spirit of America, for case, informs his books even renovation traditional Japanese culture acts on account of their protagonist.

His work in this manner tells the story of representation painful transition from traditional cultures, when the beautiful old bailiwick are lost and no hygienic spirit is won. Nagai dull in 1959.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

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

Encyclopedia of False Literature in the 20th Century, 3rd edition, 4 volumes, Zeal.

James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

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

Snyder, Stephen, Fictions mention Desire: Narrative Form in say publicly Novels of Nagai Kafū, Doctrine of Hawaii Press, 2000.

Twentieth-Century Erudite 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. Flyer, "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 Finally Fully Exposed."

Journal of the Association of Workers of Japanese, November, 1988, Steven D.

Carter, "What's So Secret about A Strange Tale?," pp. 151-168.

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

WMU News, January 17, 2007, "Famous Asiatic Author Lived and Wrote fall to pieces Kalamazoo."

World Literature Today, March 22, 1995, Celeste Loughman, review wages During the Rains and Burgeon in the Shade, p.

438.

ONLINE

Columbia University Press Web site,http://cup.columbia.edu/ (June 19, 2008), author profile splendid review of Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale.

Metropolis,http://metropolis.co.jp/ (June 19, 2008), Author Mansfield, "Kafu's City."