is the pen name of Japanese author, playwright, essayist, and diarist
Nagai Sōkichi (永井 壮吉). His works are noted for their depictions of life in early 20th-century
Tokyo, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
, especially among
geisha, Geiko or Geigi are traditional, female Japanese entertainers whose skills include performing various Japanese arts such as classical music and dance.-Terms:...
, prostitutes, cabaret dancers, and other denizens of the city's lively entertainment districts.
Biography
Kafū was born at Kanetomi-chō 45, Koishikawa-ku (now Kasuga-chō,
Bunkyō, Tokyois one of the 23 special wards of Tokyo, Japan. Situated in the middle of the ward area, Bunkyō is a residential and educational center. Beginning in the Meiji period, literati like Natsume Sōseki, as well as scholars and politicians have lived there...
), the eldest son of Nagai Kyūichirō (永井 久一郎), his father, who was then 28 years old, and Nagai Tsune (永井 恆), then 19. Kyūichirō was a scholar, bureaucrat, and businessman who later became known for his
Chinese poetryChinese poetry is poetry written, spoken, or chanted in the Chinese language, which includes various versions of Chinese language, including Classical Chinese, Standard Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, Yue Chinese, as well as many other historical and vernacular varieties of the Chinese language...
. Kafū had three brothers and one sister. When the second son was born in 1883, Kafū was sent to live with his mother's family. In 1884, he attended the kindergarten affiliated with
the Ochanomizu women's teachers' collegeis one of only two national women's universities in Japan. The other one is the Nara Women's University.-History:Ochanomizu University was founded in 1875 as a teacher training institute for women located in Tokyo's Ochanomizu neighborhood. On September 1, 1923, the campus was destroyed in the...
, and his father visited Europe on government business. Kafū returned to his parents' home in January 1886, when he entered elementary school.
In 1891, he attended a private English-language school in
Kanda, TokyoSee also Kanda, Fukuoka and the disambiguation page for Kanda. is a district in Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. It encompasses about thirty neighborhoods...
. In 1894, he became ill, perhaps with
scrofulaTuberculous cervical lymphadenitis refers to a lymphadenitis of the cervical lymph nodes associated with tuberculosis. It was previously known as "scrofula".-The disease:...
, and spent several months in 1895 in a hospital in Odawara. He began studying the
shakuhachiThe is a Japanese end-blown flute. It is traditionally made of bamboo, but versions now exist in ABS and hardwoods. It was used by the monks of the Fuke school of Zen Buddhism in the practice of...
and
Chinese poetryChinese poetry is poetry written, spoken, or chanted in the Chinese language, which includes various versions of Chinese language, including Classical Chinese, Standard Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, Yue Chinese, as well as many other historical and vernacular varieties of the Chinese language...
in 1896 at the age of 17. In February of the following year, he made his first of many visits to the
YoshiwaraYoshiwara was a famous Akasen district in Edo, present-day Tōkyō, Japan.In the early 17th century, there was widespread male and female prostitution throughout the cities of Kyoto, Edo, and Osaka. To counter this, an order of Tokugawa Hidetada of the Tokugawa shogunate restricted prostitution to...
red-light district. The same year, he graduated from middle school and failed the entrance exam for university. With his mother and younger brothers, he visited
ShanghaiShanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
, where his father was then working for the shipping company Nippon Yusen. He returned to Japan in the autumn and enrolled in the
Chinese-languageThe Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
department of the institutions for foreign-language educations affiliated with the
Higher Commercial Schoolis a national university specialised in the social sciences in Tokyo, Japan. The University has campuses in Kunitachi, Kodaira, and Kanda.Hitotsubashi is considered as one of the most prestigious universities in Japan. It is ranked 25th in the world in 2011 by École des Mines de Paris.Hitotsubashi...
.
In 1898, he began writing short stories and studied with the novelist
Hirotsu Ryūrōwas the pen-name of a novelist in Meiji period Japan. He is credited with the creation of the genre in Japanese literature of . His real name was Hirotsu Naoto.-Early life:...
(広津 柳浪), and in 1899 he became involved in writing and performing
rakugois a Japanese verbal entertainment. The lone sits on the stage, called the . Using only a paper fan and a small cloth as props, and without standing up from the seiza sitting position, the rakugo artist depicts a long and complicated comical story...
and dropped out of the foreign-language school.
In 1900, he began publishing short stories. In 1901, he got a job briefly as a newspaper reporter and later began studying
FrenchFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
.
The following timeline is based on notes that he appended to the 11th handwritten volume of
Danchōtei Nichijō:
- 1903: Travels to the United States. Stays in Tacoma, Washington.
- 1904: Visits the St. Louis
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
Exposition. Enrolls in Kalamazoo CollegeKalamazoo College, also known as K College or simply K, is a private liberal arts college in Kalamazoo, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1833, the college is among the 100 oldest in the country. Today, it produces more Peace Corps volunteers per capita than any other U.S...
in MichiganMichigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
.
- 1905: Moves to New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and begins working for a Japanese bank.
- 1906: Travels to Lyon
Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....
, ParisParis is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, and LondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, and then returns to Japan. Publishes American Stories.
- 1907: Publishes Furansu Monogatari (French Stories), which is immediately suppressed.
- 1908 - 1911: Has many stories published and some plays performed. Studies at Kalamazoo College
Kalamazoo College, also known as K College or simply K, is a private liberal arts college in Kalamazoo, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1833, the college is among the 100 oldest in the country. Today, it produces more Peace Corps volunteers per capita than any other U.S...
, in MichiganMichigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
.
- 1912: Marries.
- 1913: Father dies. Publishes collection of translated poems. Gets divorced. Takes on a mistress.
- 1914: Marries again.
- 1915: Anthology of works published. Divorces again. Lives for several months in a geisha house.
- 1916: Launches a literary magazine.
- 1918: First volume of collected works published.
- 1919: Second and third volumes of collected works published. Takes on a mistress.
- 1920: Play performed at Imperial Theater. Lets mistress go.
- 1921 - 1922: Several plays performed in Tokyo.
- 1923 - 1944: Continues to write, though publications become less frequent.
- 1945: Tokyo home destroyed in air raids
The bombing of Tokyo, often referred to as a "firebombing", was conducted by the United States Army Air Forces during the Pacific campaigns of World War II. The U.S. mounted a small-scale raid on Tokyo in April 1942, with large morale effects...
. Moves to apartment, which is also destroyed.
During World War II, the number of Japanese literature published was limited due to extreme censorship from the government in order to encourage artists and writers to direct their focus towards the war effort. Though there were very few works published during wartime, Nagai Kafu became one of the rebels who opposed the government and continued to write. As a result, he was able to maintain his status as a popular novelist throughout the war. After the war, many Japanese authors were emotionally and psychologically affected and the aftereffects began to show in numerous Japanese literatures. Story plot, poem topics and essay ideas were all related to death, disease, despair and defeat. However, since Nagai Kafu did not contribute to the war effort, he was not influenced as heavily with defeat as other Japanese individuals. Thus, he continued to write about the things he loved in life which were mainly Geishas, prostitutes and dancers. Nagai Kafu continued writing both plays and novels until his death on April 30, 1959 from a gastric ulcer.
Kafū continued to write and keep his diary until his death in 1959. The edition of his collected works published by Iwanami Shoten in the 1990s runs to 30 volumes.
Writing style
Nagai's writing style varied depending on his genre and audience. Reflecting his study of
classical ChineseClassical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese...
and his wide reading of premodern Japanese texts, his diaries and some of his essays are written in the highly literary
bungo (文語) style. Most of his plays and novels, in contrast, are written in a modern style typical of the era in which he wrote, and the dialogue spoken by his characters seems particularly natural and unaffected.
Major works
Among Nagai's major works are:
- American Stories (あめりか物語, Amerika Monogatari, 1908)
- Geisha in Rivalry
, also translated under the title of Rivalry, is a novel. Rivalry: A Geisha’s Tale was first published in Japanese in 1918 and was first translated into English in 1963. The author, Nagai Kafu, a Japanese novelist, was born in 1879 and died in 1959. Kafu was an editor of literary magazines prior...
(腕くらべ, Ude Kurabe, 1916-1917)
- A Strange Tale from East of the River (濹東綺譚, Bokutō Kidan, 1937)
- His diaries, especially Danchōtei Nichijō (断腸亭日乗, written 1917-1959)
- During the Rains & Flowers in the Shade
- Sumida River (すみだ川, Sumidagawa, 1911)
See also
- Japanese literature
Early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese. Indian literature also had an influence through the diffusion of Buddhism in Japan...
- List of Japanese authors
- Kafū Nagai's grave