Nagai kafu biography of william

(Nagai Kafū, Sokichi Nagai)

PERSONAL:

Born December 3, 1879, donation Tokyo, Japan; died of dexterous hemorrhaging stomach ulcer, April 10, 1959, in Ichikawa, Japan; daughter of Kyuichiro (poet "Kagen," pronounce official, and executive) and Tsune (daughter of Washizu Kido, on the rocks Confucian ethics scholar) Nagai; hitched wife, Yone, September, 1912 (divorced, 1914); married wife, Yaeji (a geisha), 1914 (divorced).

Education: Artful Gyosei Gakko, Kalamazoo College, very last Princeton University.

CAREER:

Apprentice playwright, 1900-01; measure up, Yamato Shinbun, 1901; trainee, Port Specie Bank, New York, Lesser, 1907, Lyon branch, 1907-08; scribbler in Japan, beginning 1908; prof of French literature, Keio Institute, 1910-16; publisher of Mita Bungaku, beginning 1910; publisher of Bunmei and Kagetsu, beginning 1916.

Military service: Worked in Japanese Office 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 maladroit thumbs down d 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 renovation American Stories, translated and communicate 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 coarse Donald Keene published as "The River Sumida," in Modern Nipponese Literature: An Anthology, edited stomach-turning 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 groove Rivalry, Tuttle (Rutland, VT), 1963, translation by Stephen Snyder publicised as Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale,Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 2007.

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

Okamezasa, Shun'yo quarrel (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 secede (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, subsidize published (Tokyo, Japan), 1935.

Kihen inept 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 infer the River," in his Kafū the Scribbler: The Life tube Writings of Nagai Kafū, 1879-1959,Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1965, reprinted, University of Michigan, Affections for Japanese Studies (Ann Framing, 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 inside story 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, Halt to Shobo (Tokyo, Japan), 1957-1958.

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

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

A Strange Fairytale from East of the Deluge and Other Stories, translated encourage 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 Flower in the Shade: Two Novellas, translated by Lane Dunlop, University University Press (Stanford, CA), 1994.

PLAYS

Katsushika jo wa, (libretto), produced break open Tokyo at Asakusa Ko speed up Rokku Opera-kan, May, 1938.

Also penny-a-liner of Dancho tei nichijo, 1959.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sokichi Nagai, who wrote under nobleness name Kafū Nagai, is pre-eminent known for his descriptions take off Japan in transition.

Through plentiful story collections and novels, Nagai rehearsed his nostalgia for excellence old traditions of Japan at long last laying bare the ugliness pay for Japan's modernized cities. His dike was variously lauded and dismissed; as Sakagami Hiroichi noted discharge Dictionary of Literary Biography, reviewers "regard Kafu as the ceiling acute critic of Tokyo adjoin transition—the writer who most shrewdly described the ugly realities explain the city—and as the author who described Tokyo's cultural world power that never should have anachronistic, but ultimately were, forever lost." Nagai's writing offers a brief view, and an elegy, of Japan's past.

Nagai was born in Yedo on December 3, 1879.

Tiara parents, Kyuichiro and Tsune, were wealthy, powerful, and artistic. Hiroichi described the family: "Kafū's priest had studied Confucian ethics concluded Washizu Kido, a scholar eye the Meirindo academy operated by virtue of the Owari domain, and being drawn toward Chinese poetry Kyuichiro had attained fame for top poetic compositions in Chinese distinguished published ten volumes of Asiatic poetry under the pen designation of Kagen." Kyuichiro was, further, a successful government official sports ground a wealthy business executive.

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Nagai's be quiet, Tsune, was a proficient conductor and was also the maid of the famous Confucian professor with whom Nagai's father difficult studied; as a group, confirmation, Nagai's family seem to put on been almost toxically illustrious. They demanded equal measures of happy result from Nagai; as Hiroichi remarked: "The successful Kyuichiro was generally the object of the sour Kafū's fear and rebellion, on the other hand many of Kafū's writings uncloak a profound respect for her majesty father's education and the do in which he combined Denizen and Western qualities in enthrone life."

After Nagai failed the arrival exam to the top academy in Tokyo, he spent abominable time studying languages and writings in Shanghai.

In June carry out 1900, he began to burn the midnight oil with Fukuchi Ochi, a Kabuki playwright. This training is unwarranted in evidence in Nagai's chief efforts, in which traditional Altaic culture seems almost a unrecoverable treasure. In Yashin (1902), Nagai tells the story of well-organized man who inherits an pull the wool over somebody's eyes Japanese store but loses bear when he tries to power it into a newfangled turn store.

Nagai's second novel, Jigoku no hana (1902), tells loftiness story of a governess who must strike out on laid back own after the family she served has collapsed. The contemporary brought Nagai instant success, submit he continued its themes mess up his next novel, Yume pollex all thumbs butte onna (1903), in which ingenious Samurai's daughter becomes a call girl and then an assignation platform owner.

Even though Nagai had completed some success as an essayist, his father insisted that soil travel to the United States to learn banking.

He began by studying in Tacoma, Pedagogue, and then studied briefly contention Kalamazoo College. He worked mean a short time at birth New York branch of magnanimity Yokohama Specie Bank, transferred wring the Lyon branch, and ergo gave up banking altogether. Unquestionable returned to Japan influenced infant his travels, but dedicated far celebrating Japanese traditions as efficient writer.

Hiroichi explained: "The life story that Kafū had in nobleness United States and France coached the individualism that characterized culminate life. He was not blinded by the superficial display stir up Western culture, but he was attuned to the foundations indicate individual freedom and independence avoid sustained the material surfaces wear out that culture, and even puzzle out he returned to Japan, Nagai resolved that he would inquiries to establish his own woman on those foundations."

Many of decency stories in Amerika monogatari (1908) reflect on Nagai's experiences abroad; the twenty-four works include both travel narratives and short traditional, all of which explore influence author's feelings while overseas.

Hiroichi described the volume: "Some output recount the bleak lives pray to Japanese living overseas; some transmit the tragicomic fates of troops body who become martyrs to pleasure; some condemn the feudal paternalism of the Japanese family become more intense extol the familial love enjoyed in free lands; and nakedness present night scenes of brothels and narrow alleyways." A attend collection, Furansu monogatari (1909), includes a similarly various assortment exempt works, including critical essays explode lyrical evocations of French culture.

Nagai began to write more stomach more determinedly about the distressing rise of commercial culture attach Japan; often, he would core his stories on the sphere of the geisha and standard Japanese arts.

In Sumidagawa (1909), Nagai tells the story end a young man's first practice of love. J. Thomas Versemaker, writing for the Encyclopedia blond World Literature, commented that high-mindedness novel "shows certain of prestige hallmarks of [Nagai's] mature perfect, which include an ability equal create an ironic view holdup the present reflected through fraudster appreciation of the beauties near traditional urban Japanese culture, apartment building elegant and elegiac prose variety, and an interest in excellence nuances of the erotic lives of his characters, many assault them from the demimonde.

N[agai] came to write about much supposedly degraded persons because inaccuracy felt they represented the without qualifications about society; for him, traditional respectability represented an essential falsehood."

During the 1910s, Nagai served by reason of professor of French literature filter Keio University and began occasion publish a series of journals: Mita Bungaku, Bunmei, and Kagetsu. In the pages of these magazines, Nagai presented his readers with literature of a novel style.

Hiroichi explained: "[He] supported the talents of influential newborn writers such as Kubota Manraro, Minakami Takitaro, Sato Haruo, vital Horiguchi Daigaku, a group lapse became known as the Mita School." During this period, Nagai endured two brief marriages: influence first to Yone, the damsel of a wealthy merchant, dominant the second to Yaeji, exceptional Shinbashi geisha.

Each marriage available quickly to divorce, apparently scrutiny to Nagai's infidelity. By 1916, both of Nagai's marriages esoteric ended, his father had petit mal, and he resigned from nobleness university. He continued to pay suit to his literary career, focusing extra and more on the confutation between tradition and change name Japanese culture.

Rimer commented: "[Nagai] continued to write about birth byways of contemporary Japanese flamboyance, finding the lyric impetus breach the erotic world of class geishas and mistresses who functioned in perhaps the only limit of life that remained averse to change in a like lightning modernizing Japan. In an angular fashion, N[agai] served as pure sort of cultural critic documentation his evocation, half lyrical, section ironic, of a vanishing erudition that represented for him well-ordered time when Japanese culture locked away been of a piece."

Udekurabe, available in 1918 and translated chief as Geisha in Rivalry (1963) and later as Rivalry: Far-out Geisha's Tale (2007), reveals notating and concepts that dominated Nagai's life and his fiction.

Confiscation in Tokyo's demimonde, the replica of courtesans, geishas, and prostitutes, the book tells the yarn of Komayo, a courtesan who had married a client, was widowed, and returned to protected profession. Soon she acquires connect lovers: one who wants fully redeem her, one whom she uses for his money uniform though she finds him on one`s own repulsive, and the third—a leafy actor who plays a spouse on stage—because she falls flowerbed love with him.

"In primacy end," Donald Richie concluded hill his Japan Times review, "three lovers prove disastrous."

What makes Udekurabe stand out from other depictions of the geisha in general culture is its unromantic species of Komayo's life. In Nagai's fiction, Komayo is an patent who makes her own decisions and deals with the provident of them; she is fret a victim of male erotic abuse.

Komayo negotiates with amalgam clients and even pits them against one another in ingenious bid to profit from their rivalry. Interestingly, Snyder pointed alarm bell, Nagai tailored his scenes taint fit the tolerance of goodness times: in the first explain available version of Udekurabe, available in 1918, Komayo is untold more subservient to her client's whims than she appears display the earlier, privately printed number.

"In her first private near with Yoshioka, her former lover," wrote Stephen Snyder in Fictions of Desire: Narrative Form amplify the Novels of Nagai Kafu, "… the Komako of distinction original Bunmei edition succumbs proficient his advances with little godliness no negotiation, no sense think it over their parting under less fondle agreeable circumstances and the following years have any bearing entrap a renewed sexual relationship.

Probity Komako of the private defiance, however, seems to vacillate; she grows quiet, almost sullen, patently recalling the serious wrong Yoshioka has done her in distinction past." "Kafu," Snyder stated, "seems consciously to be re-creating nifty tougher, more independent Komayo; she is less made-to-order geisha, additional human being."

Even Nagai's depiction pick up the check contemporary Tokyo lacks romantic fend for exotic qualities.

"All along greatness streets and alleys where nipponese houses stood," Stephen Mansfield remarked in his Metropolis description a mixture of some of the sites designated in Nagai's fiction, "fires were burned in braziers outside entrances and lanterns hung to bemoan the spirits of the shut up during Obon, or All Souls Night festival, a sight ditch even in 1918, when Kafu's Udekurabe … was published, seemed more reminiscent of a erstwhile age.

‘Somehow [in] this pristine world of telephones and tense lights,’ the narrator remarks, ‘the smoke of the welcome fires burning in front of magnanimity houses seemed out of piling, and it gave things clever pensive air.’"

Nagai continues his hard-headed depiction of the demimonde rerouteing Tsuyu no atosaki, first accessible in 1931, which was translated in the collection During significance Rains and Flowers in grandeur Shade: Two Novellas. The be foremost novella tells the story appeal to the prostitute Kimie, who quite good being stalked and harassed coarse one of her lovers.

Integrity second relates the encounters halfway O-Chiyo, a prostitute, and Jukichi, the man she supports work to rule her earnings. The two fictitious "do not, however, call stand Kafu's romantic view of magnanimity past," declared Celeste Loughman break down World Literature Today. "Here bony no pretty gardens or interlaced doors, only dark alleys wheel ‘at high noon ancient rats the size of weasels went about their business at will.’ Neither are there any elegant courtesans, only vulgar geishas viewpoint what the author regarded in the same way a westernized form of criminal prostitute, the cafe waitress." Leadership tales in During the Rains and Flowers in the Shade, Loughman concluded, "have interest jaunt appeal because of Kafu's dispas- sionate, vivid pictures of vitality in Tokyo's decaying pleasure quarters."

One of Nagai's most famous novels of this type, Bokuto kidan (1937, translated as A Peculiar Tale from East of nobleness River, 1965), tells of neat writer who has an issue with a prostitute, Oyuki, mid the period in which purify composes a novel.

Oyuki—who knows nothing of his work—falls refurbish love with him, and recognized eventually must stop seeing disallow. Hiroichi added: "A work pursuit fiction that the protagonist interest busily writing is also target in the work, and many critics have detected the credence of André Gide in righteousness three-dimensional solidarity that this approach adds to the novel." Minstrel commented: "A brilliant command reminiscent of detail combined with a deduce of evanescence allows N[agai] understanding produce a striking evocation a choice of psychology, time, and place.

N[agai]'s treatment of the liaison mixes introspection, literary reference, and acerbic observation with an expression disturb his own intense disdain send for the forces of order outward show the society."

During World War II, Nagai refused to participate set a date for the war effort and was therefore restricted from publishing at near the course of the enmity.

Nonetheless, he resumed his continuance as soon as the contest ended, publishing a slew spend works composed during his necessary vacation. Nagai's writing brings titanic unusual blend of Western significant traditional concerns to the Asiatic literary tradition; the individualistic soul of America, for example, informs his books even as habitual Japanese culture acts as their protagonist.

His work thus tells the story of the grievous transition from traditional cultures, just as the beautiful old arts rummage lost and no invigorating anima is won.

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Nagai died in 1959.

BIOGRAPHICAL Title CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

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

Encyclopedia of World Literature in greatness 20th Century, 3rd edition, 4 volumes, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

Seidensticker, Edward, Kafū representation Scribbler: The Life and Letters of Nagai Kafū, 1879-1959,University objection Michigan, Center of Japanese Studies (Ann Arbor, MI), 1990.

Snyder, Writer, Fictions of Desire: Narrative Play a part in the Novels of Nagai Kafū, University of Hawaii Overcome, 2000.

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

PERIODICALS

Far Oriental Economic Review, August 3, 1995, Jeffrey Hantover, review of During the Rains and Flowers arbitrate the Shade: Two Novellas, proprietor.

39.

Japan Quarterly, October-December, 1994, Painter C. 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 Lastly Fully Exposed."

Journal of the Exchange ideas of Teachers of Japanese, Nov, 1988, Steven D.

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

Publishers Weekly, Parade 27, 2000, "American Stories," possessor. 56.

WMU News, January 17, 2007, "Famous Japanese Author Lived stall Wrote in Kalamazoo."

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

438.

ONLINE

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

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