Kafū Nagai
Template:Short description Template:Infobox writer Template:Nihongo was a Japanese writer, editor and translator.<ref name="kotobank">Template:Cite web</ref> His novels Geisha in Rivalry and A Strange Tale from East of the River are noted for their depictions of life of the demimonde in early 20th-century Tokyo.<ref name="dunlop">Template:Cite book</ref>
Biography
Nagai was born Sōkichi Nagai (Template:Lang) in Koishikawa, Bunkyō, Tokyo, as the eldest son of government official Kyūichirō Nagai<ref name="kotobank" /><ref name="henshall">Template:Cite book</ref> and his wife Tsune, the daughter of scholar Washizu Kidō.<ref name=":1">Template:Cite book</ref> His father was an elite government official in the Home Ministry, who had studied as an exchange student in the United States<ref name="kotobank" /> and also wrote and published Chinese poetry.<ref name="schulz" /> Kyūichirō later left his Ministry occupation to work for the Nippon Yusen shipping company.<ref name="dunlop" /> When the second son was born in 1883, Nagai was sent to live with his maternal grandmother until 1886.<ref name="schulz">Template:Cite book</ref> During his childhood, he visited a Chinese language school, and, under his mother's influence, was taught singing and playing music instruments, showing a fondness for utazawa, a late Edo era style of singing accompanied by the shamisen.<ref name="schulz" /> Starting in 1890, he was also taught English language.<ref name="schulz" />
Due to illness, Nagai spent several months in 1895 in a hospital in Odawara.<ref name="Seidensticker">Template:Cite book</ref> From 1897 on, he started his regular visits to the Yoshiwara red-light district, accompanied by his friend and writer Seiichi Inoue.<ref name="schulz" /> The same year, he graduated from junior high school.<ref name="kotobank" /> With his mother and younger brothers, he visited Shanghai, where his father was working for Nippon Yusen.<ref name="Seidensticker" /> He returned to Japan in Autumn and enrolled in the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages.<ref name="kotobank" /><ref name="henshall" />
In 1898, he published his first short story Sudare no tsuki.<ref name="schulz" /> He became a disciple of novelist Hirotsu Ryūrō and writer Fukuchi Ōchi, studied rakugo and kabuki play writing, appeared on stage in yose plays, and dropped out of University.<ref name="kotobank" /><ref name="schulz" /> His writings were influenced by French Naturalism and Émile Zola, whose work he also translated.<ref name="schulz" /> Between 1903 and 1908, through his father's influence, Nagai visited the United States and later France, a time which he wrote down in his Template:Ill (Amerika monogatari) and Furansu monogatari (lit. "French Stories").<ref name="schulz" /> The 1908 publication of American Stories met with much critical acclaim.<ref name="kotobank" />
In 1910, Nagai started teaching as a professor of literature at Keio University and became the editor of the literary magazine Mita Bungaku.<ref name="kotobank" /> At this time, he had already turned away from Naturalism and taken a shift towards Aestheticism.<ref name="kotobank" /><ref name="henshall" /><ref name="schulz" /> The transition from the Meiji era to the Taishō era was also a turning point in Nagai's life: the death of his father, the divorce from both his first and second wife<ref name="kotobank" /> (the second marriage—to a geisha—led to the alienation of his mother),<ref name="dunlop" /> and the resigning from his position at Keio University and Mita Bungaku.<ref name="kotobank" /> A frequenter of Tokyo's demimonde, Nagai wrote many stories about its inhabitants, geisha, courtesans and their customers, most notably Geisha in Rivalry (1916–17).<ref name="dunlop" />
After a decade-long hiatus, he published the novellas During the Rains (1931), Flowers in the Shade (1934) and A Strange Tale from East of the River (1937), with the latter having repeatedly been cited as his major work.<ref name="dunlop" /><ref name="kotobank2">Template:Cite web</ref> His contempt for the militarist regime, which in turn regarded his work as subversive for the war effort, led to a halt of the publishing of his writings until the end of World War II.<ref name="kotobank" /><ref name="dunlop" /> The publication of his diaries (1917–1959) ranks as the major literary event of his post-war career.<ref name="dunlop" />
In 1952, Nagai received the Order of Culture, and in 1954, he was elected a member of the Japan Art Academy.<ref name="kotobank" /> He died on 30 April 1959.<ref name="kotobank" /><ref name="dunlop" />
Selected works
- 1908: American Stories (あめりか物語, Amerika monogatari)
- 1911: The River Sumida (すみだ川, Sumidagawa)
- 1916–1917: Geisha in Rivalry (腕くらべ, Ude kurabe)
- 1917–1959: Danchōtei nichijō (断腸亭日乗)
- 1931: During the Rains (つゆのあとさき, Tsuyu no atosaki)
- 1934: Flowers in the Shade (ひかげの花, Hikage no hana)
- 1937: A Strange Tale from East of the River (濹東綺譚, Bokutō kidan)
Notes
References
External links
- Pages with broken file links
- 1879 births
- 1959 deaths
- People from the Empire of Japan
- Japanese dramatists and playwrights
- 20th-century Japanese novelists
- 20th-century Japanese diarists
- Academic staff of Keio University
- Writers from Tokyo
- Recipients of the Order of Culture
- 20th-century Japanese essayists
- People from Bunkyō
- Burials at Zōshigaya Cemetery
- Nagai clan