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Kafu the Scribbler
The Life and Writings of Nagai Kafu 1879-1959.
Translations in this volume have been accepted in the Japanese Literature Series of the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works
Translations in this volume have been accepted in the Japanese Literature Series of the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works
360 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
3 people are currently reading
158 people want to read
About the author
Edward G. Seidensticker
60 books39 followersEdward George Seidensticker was a distinguished American scholar, translator, and historian renowned for his translations of Japanese literature, both classical and modern. Born in 1921 near Castle Rock, Colorado, Seidensticker studied English at the University of Colorado and later became fluent in Japanese through the U.S. Navy Japanese Language School during World War II. He served in the Pacific theater as a Marine language officer, later participating in Japan’s occupation and developing a lasting affinity for the country and its culture.
Following his military service, he earned a master’s degree from Columbia University and briefly worked in the U.S. Foreign Service in Tokyo. Deciding on an academic path, he studied Japanese literature at the University of Tokyo and began translating major literary works. His translations of Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country and Thousand Cranes helped introduce modern Japanese literature to a Western audience and contributed to Kawabata’s Nobel Prize win in 1968. Seidensticker also translated works by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki and Yukio Mishima, and his 1976 translation of The Tale of Genji remains a landmark achievement.
He taught at Stanford, the University of Michigan, and Columbia University. Seidensticker also authored literary criticism, cultural histories, and a memoir. He received numerous honors and remains a towering figure in the field of Japan studies.
Following his military service, he earned a master’s degree from Columbia University and briefly worked in the U.S. Foreign Service in Tokyo. Deciding on an academic path, he studied Japanese literature at the University of Tokyo and began translating major literary works. His translations of Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country and Thousand Cranes helped introduce modern Japanese literature to a Western audience and contributed to Kawabata’s Nobel Prize win in 1968. Seidensticker also translated works by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki and Yukio Mishima, and his 1976 translation of The Tale of Genji remains a landmark achievement.
He taught at Stanford, the University of Michigan, and Columbia University. Seidensticker also authored literary criticism, cultural histories, and a memoir. He received numerous honors and remains a towering figure in the field of Japan studies.
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April 9, 2014 Biography and translated fiction of Nagai Kafu
Every English-speaker with the remotest interest in Japanese literature has at least a few books translated by Edward Seidensticker (1921 – 2007) in their library. One could make the case that his supple translations made it possible for Kawabata Yasunari to be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. Along with Kawabata, Mishima, Tanizaki, and Murasaki, Seidensticker also translated lesser known Japanese authors such as Nagai Kafu, who has been providing me with great pleasure the last few months and is the focus of this book.
Kafu the Scribbler (1965) is an unusual hybrid of critical biography and anthology, with the biography, liberally spiced with often lengthy passages translated from Kafu's writings, filling out the first 180 pages and a selection of translated texts comprising the second half of the book. Seidensticker commences with a quasi-apologia explaining why he would bring such an author as Kafu to the reader's attention. Wasted effort in my case. But for the vacillating I'll mention that Donald Keene writes in his excellent Dawn to the West
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
that for the Japanese the two most-admired writers of modern Japan are Mori Ogai and Natsume Soseki. (Not the received wisdom here in the West.) Supplementing this, his list of the "most popular and important writers" of modern Japan is: "Nagai Kafu, Tanizaki Junichiro, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Kawabata Yasunari and Mishima Yukio." So Kafu is in very good company, according to Keene.
I'll begin with two paragraphs cribbed from my earlier reviews of Kafu's books.
Nagai Kafu (1879-1959) was in the second generation of Meiji writers behind that of Natsume Soseki. Early in his career he was associated with the Japanese Naturalist movement/school, whose adherents actually adopted only certain relatively superficial characteristics of the French naturalists to their use. Though Kafu initially claimed Zola as his master, he very soon replaced him with Maupassant (and, yet later, with Mori Ogai). Unlike most of the Japanese Naturalists, Kafu learned some French and made a few translations into the Japanese. Of particular note, his father sent his recalcitrant son to the USA to learn how to be a businessman. Not much was learned about business during his four years there, but he did write a book of interesting short stories based on his American experience.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
He finally talked his father into sending him to France for a year, where he improved his command of French and had no small number of liaisons with the fairer sex (as he had done in the USA). This sojourn also resulted in a bookful of short stories.
Reluctantly back in Japan, Kafu railed against the evolution of Meiji Japan, accusing his homeland both of abandoning its history and culture and of adopting only the worst aspects of the West. At this stage in his life (around 1910) he loved the pre-Meiji Edo culture (when the capital was transferred from Kyoto to Edo early in the Meiji era, the latter was renamed Tokyo, Eastern Capital). Due to the rapid development in Tokyo, Edo Japan could only still be found in the poorer districts, in the Low City, where the artisans, artists and small merchants lived, and in some of the pleasure districts. Kafu set his Japanese fiction almost exclusively in these districts, as well as spent most of his time there, taking endless walks through the smallest streets trying to forget (then) modern Japan and enjoying the attentions of women from the lofty geisha down to the most miserable "working girls". Under parental pressure, he entered an arranged marriage but divorced shortly after his father's death. He didn't let his brief marriage interfere with his pursuits.
Soon after his return to Japan, Kafu found himself at the center of Japanese literary life. A Tokyo university made him professor and the editor of their "antinaturalist" literary journal, Mita Literature. For a few years, Kafu was a mover and a shaker, as well as quite productive. But in 1916 he resigned from the university, unhappy with the development of the literary scene, among other matters.(*) His literary production gradually fell off until, around 40 years of age, he felt he was finished as a writer. He became a rather bitter recluse. Nonetheless, he had periods of creativity interspersed among the long fallow periods and produced some of his most notable works before the beginning of World War II.
Already before the war, the military authorities made problems for Kafu, but when the festivities began for real, they banned his works. He wrote 4 or 5 novellas and short stories during the war and put them in his desk drawer. But most of his writing was for his diary, which he had kept since the 1910's and in which, along with lovely extended passages of weather and seasons in his inimitable manner, he writes about his explorations in the red light districts, his failing health, decaying standards in everything and the military dictatorship, who, he writes, made only one correct decision - to prohibit neon signs. When the military authorities tried to force him to "contribute" some gold jewelry to the war effort, Kafu preferred to throw them into the river. The diary doesn't seem to have been translated yet, so the passages Seidensticker gives us in this book are rare glimpses into what many Japanese critics consider to be his most important text. The passages concerning the American bombing raids are particularly gripping; in March, 1945, his house and his ten thousand volume library were destroyed - he escaped only with a briefcase containing his diary and other manuscripts. When the war ended, Kafu re-emerged, publishing the pieces he had written during the hostilities. Because he had been persona non grata for the now vituperated militarists, after the war he was lionized and experienced fame for a time.
In the second half of this book Seidensticker offers complete translations of 7 short stories and novellas, as well as a chapter or excerpts of 3 longer pieces.(**) I'll say nothing about the excerpts; one of the novellas I have in another translation and have already reviewed (Sumidagawa - The River Sumida)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
So permit me to say a few words about 2 of the short stories and the remaining novella, Ame Shosho - Quiet Rain.
"The Peony Garden" (1909) is a perfect little jewel of a short story which almost bodily transports the reader to Tokyo in a late May of the early 20th century. A man has spent a night in an inn with a geisha, and they emerge in the afternoon into the bustling streets of the city, the sights, sounds and odors sweeping over them. The man is already parting from the woman in his thoughts when she suggests they take a boat on one of the Sumida canals to see a famous peony garden. He agrees. More sights, sounds and odors. As the boat moves along the canal they discuss their relationship lightly, since they are Japanese and a man and woman of experience. Marriage - maybe some day; take another lover - been there, done that; suicide - no fun there; move to the countryside - very tiresome. They land at the peony garden, where all of their faded ennui is reflected back at them.
The story is much better than my summary.
"Coming Down With a Cold" (1912) is a profoundly sad story about a man and a geisha. This time the man is strongly tied to the woman, emotionally, financially, existentially, but she is not only reaching the end of her career, she is probably coming down with pneumonia, perhaps even tuberculosis, which they silently agree to call a "cold". A poignant story, ending with "They looked at each other in silence, and smiled."
Quiet Rain (1921) is an unusual piece, closer to autobiographical essay than fiction but not really either. The first person narrator muses about his isolation from other people and his fears that it will eternalize itself, though he deeply enjoys the melancholy mood it places him in. But this is just a lead in to a rambling, associative excursion through Chinese poetry, styles of samisen music, memories of his father and a wealthy and very cultured capitalist acquaintance who becomes the center of the piece and an opportunity for Kafu to bewail the decline in taste and education since the Edo period. This text is not for everyone, but Seidensticker calls it a masterpiece, and I am inclined to agree.
Kafu was multi-talented; he painted, and this book is studded with Kafu's drawings; he also wrote essays, some poetry, some Kabuki plays, and he even wrote and acted in a "burlesque skit" for the stage, which was subsequently made into a film. Kafu's accomplishments in these are not on the same niveau as those of, say, Jean Cocteau, but they are not at all embarrassing.
(*) He, like some of the 19th century Germans I have been reading recently, inherited money and did not need to work for a living. Why, oh why not me?!
(**) These translations were re-published as A Strange Tale from East of the River and Other Stories
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
******************************************************
In some recent reviews I have been discussing some of the difficulties of translating classic Chinese poetry into modern English. For a change, I'd like to draw your attention to a short and fascinating article by Seidensticker entitled "On Trying to Translate Japanese" (Encounter, 1958):
http://www.unz.org/Pub/Encounter-1958...
A literal translation of a Japanese sentence:
The I yesterday to you introduced from Osaka aunt tomorrow afternoon on the Sea Breeze Express is going back.
No relative pronouns; all adjectival clauses precede the modified noun, whatever their length; the verb is last and not conjugated by person or number; often the subject is dropped. "In sum, there is an insubstantial, tentative quality about the language." This is just the beginning of the problems...
******************************************************
Rating
http://leopard.booklikes.com/post/846...
Every English-speaker with the remotest interest in Japanese literature has at least a few books translated by Edward Seidensticker (1921 – 2007) in their library. One could make the case that his supple translations made it possible for Kawabata Yasunari to be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. Along with Kawabata, Mishima, Tanizaki, and Murasaki, Seidensticker also translated lesser known Japanese authors such as Nagai Kafu, who has been providing me with great pleasure the last few months and is the focus of this book.
Kafu the Scribbler (1965) is an unusual hybrid of critical biography and anthology, with the biography, liberally spiced with often lengthy passages translated from Kafu's writings, filling out the first 180 pages and a selection of translated texts comprising the second half of the book. Seidensticker commences with a quasi-apologia explaining why he would bring such an author as Kafu to the reader's attention. Wasted effort in my case. But for the vacillating I'll mention that Donald Keene writes in his excellent Dawn to the West
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
that for the Japanese the two most-admired writers of modern Japan are Mori Ogai and Natsume Soseki. (Not the received wisdom here in the West.) Supplementing this, his list of the "most popular and important writers" of modern Japan is: "Nagai Kafu, Tanizaki Junichiro, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Kawabata Yasunari and Mishima Yukio." So Kafu is in very good company, according to Keene.
I'll begin with two paragraphs cribbed from my earlier reviews of Kafu's books.
Nagai Kafu (1879-1959) was in the second generation of Meiji writers behind that of Natsume Soseki. Early in his career he was associated with the Japanese Naturalist movement/school, whose adherents actually adopted only certain relatively superficial characteristics of the French naturalists to their use. Though Kafu initially claimed Zola as his master, he very soon replaced him with Maupassant (and, yet later, with Mori Ogai). Unlike most of the Japanese Naturalists, Kafu learned some French and made a few translations into the Japanese. Of particular note, his father sent his recalcitrant son to the USA to learn how to be a businessman. Not much was learned about business during his four years there, but he did write a book of interesting short stories based on his American experience.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
He finally talked his father into sending him to France for a year, where he improved his command of French and had no small number of liaisons with the fairer sex (as he had done in the USA). This sojourn also resulted in a bookful of short stories.
Reluctantly back in Japan, Kafu railed against the evolution of Meiji Japan, accusing his homeland both of abandoning its history and culture and of adopting only the worst aspects of the West. At this stage in his life (around 1910) he loved the pre-Meiji Edo culture (when the capital was transferred from Kyoto to Edo early in the Meiji era, the latter was renamed Tokyo, Eastern Capital). Due to the rapid development in Tokyo, Edo Japan could only still be found in the poorer districts, in the Low City, where the artisans, artists and small merchants lived, and in some of the pleasure districts. Kafu set his Japanese fiction almost exclusively in these districts, as well as spent most of his time there, taking endless walks through the smallest streets trying to forget (then) modern Japan and enjoying the attentions of women from the lofty geisha down to the most miserable "working girls". Under parental pressure, he entered an arranged marriage but divorced shortly after his father's death. He didn't let his brief marriage interfere with his pursuits.
Soon after his return to Japan, Kafu found himself at the center of Japanese literary life. A Tokyo university made him professor and the editor of their "antinaturalist" literary journal, Mita Literature. For a few years, Kafu was a mover and a shaker, as well as quite productive. But in 1916 he resigned from the university, unhappy with the development of the literary scene, among other matters.(*) His literary production gradually fell off until, around 40 years of age, he felt he was finished as a writer. He became a rather bitter recluse. Nonetheless, he had periods of creativity interspersed among the long fallow periods and produced some of his most notable works before the beginning of World War II.
Already before the war, the military authorities made problems for Kafu, but when the festivities began for real, they banned his works. He wrote 4 or 5 novellas and short stories during the war and put them in his desk drawer. But most of his writing was for his diary, which he had kept since the 1910's and in which, along with lovely extended passages of weather and seasons in his inimitable manner, he writes about his explorations in the red light districts, his failing health, decaying standards in everything and the military dictatorship, who, he writes, made only one correct decision - to prohibit neon signs. When the military authorities tried to force him to "contribute" some gold jewelry to the war effort, Kafu preferred to throw them into the river. The diary doesn't seem to have been translated yet, so the passages Seidensticker gives us in this book are rare glimpses into what many Japanese critics consider to be his most important text. The passages concerning the American bombing raids are particularly gripping; in March, 1945, his house and his ten thousand volume library were destroyed - he escaped only with a briefcase containing his diary and other manuscripts. When the war ended, Kafu re-emerged, publishing the pieces he had written during the hostilities. Because he had been persona non grata for the now vituperated militarists, after the war he was lionized and experienced fame for a time.
In the second half of this book Seidensticker offers complete translations of 7 short stories and novellas, as well as a chapter or excerpts of 3 longer pieces.(**) I'll say nothing about the excerpts; one of the novellas I have in another translation and have already reviewed (Sumidagawa - The River Sumida)
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
So permit me to say a few words about 2 of the short stories and the remaining novella, Ame Shosho - Quiet Rain.
"The Peony Garden" (1909) is a perfect little jewel of a short story which almost bodily transports the reader to Tokyo in a late May of the early 20th century. A man has spent a night in an inn with a geisha, and they emerge in the afternoon into the bustling streets of the city, the sights, sounds and odors sweeping over them. The man is already parting from the woman in his thoughts when she suggests they take a boat on one of the Sumida canals to see a famous peony garden. He agrees. More sights, sounds and odors. As the boat moves along the canal they discuss their relationship lightly, since they are Japanese and a man and woman of experience. Marriage - maybe some day; take another lover - been there, done that; suicide - no fun there; move to the countryside - very tiresome. They land at the peony garden, where all of their faded ennui is reflected back at them.
The story is much better than my summary.
"Coming Down With a Cold" (1912) is a profoundly sad story about a man and a geisha. This time the man is strongly tied to the woman, emotionally, financially, existentially, but she is not only reaching the end of her career, she is probably coming down with pneumonia, perhaps even tuberculosis, which they silently agree to call a "cold". A poignant story, ending with "They looked at each other in silence, and smiled."
Quiet Rain (1921) is an unusual piece, closer to autobiographical essay than fiction but not really either. The first person narrator muses about his isolation from other people and his fears that it will eternalize itself, though he deeply enjoys the melancholy mood it places him in. But this is just a lead in to a rambling, associative excursion through Chinese poetry, styles of samisen music, memories of his father and a wealthy and very cultured capitalist acquaintance who becomes the center of the piece and an opportunity for Kafu to bewail the decline in taste and education since the Edo period. This text is not for everyone, but Seidensticker calls it a masterpiece, and I am inclined to agree.
Kafu was multi-talented; he painted, and this book is studded with Kafu's drawings; he also wrote essays, some poetry, some Kabuki plays, and he even wrote and acted in a "burlesque skit" for the stage, which was subsequently made into a film. Kafu's accomplishments in these are not on the same niveau as those of, say, Jean Cocteau, but they are not at all embarrassing.
(*) He, like some of the 19th century Germans I have been reading recently, inherited money and did not need to work for a living. Why, oh why not me?!
(**) These translations were re-published as A Strange Tale from East of the River and Other Stories
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
******************************************************
In some recent reviews I have been discussing some of the difficulties of translating classic Chinese poetry into modern English. For a change, I'd like to draw your attention to a short and fascinating article by Seidensticker entitled "On Trying to Translate Japanese" (Encounter, 1958):
http://www.unz.org/Pub/Encounter-1958...
A literal translation of a Japanese sentence:
The I yesterday to you introduced from Osaka aunt tomorrow afternoon on the Sea Breeze Express is going back.
No relative pronouns; all adjectival clauses precede the modified noun, whatever their length; the verb is last and not conjugated by person or number; often the subject is dropped. "In sum, there is an insubstantial, tentative quality about the language." This is just the beginning of the problems...
******************************************************
Rating
http://leopard.booklikes.com/post/846...
November 26, 2020
Nostalgia rules OK.
In the afternoon, on April 28, 1959, a postcard arrived at my house telling me that I would be sent to Japan as an exchange student. I still have it up in the attic, this little bit of paper that changed my life forever. Two days later, unbeknownst to me, Nagai Kafū, a famous Japanese writer, died in Tokyo. I wish I could say that there was more of a connection, but no, there isn’t. However, my experiences at a young, impressionable age, and my experiences on subsequent occasions, when I returned to teach English, when I returned twice more to Japan, and a lifetime of reading about Japan, surrounding myself with Japanese art, loving kabuki, and listening to enka, has given me now, at a rather advanced age, a feeling of nostalgia for the Japan I knew as a teenager, for the Japan described by dozens of writers, both Japanese and foreign, the older Japan that I never even knew. And that’s my connection to this book, which is divided in two parts: one being the life and work of Nagai Kafū, and the other being the excellent translations of some stories and novel excerpts.
Nagai was the Mr. Nostalgia of Japanese literature. He was a born-and-bred Tokyoite who spent his loner-style life among the lower classes, consorting with prostitutes, geishas, kept women, noodle sellers, barbers, actresses, and samisen teachers. This underbelly of Japanese life attracted him and its disappearance created a deep despondency in him that caused him to withdraw from the world for long periods. He seems to have relentlessly pursued the past, the life of pre-Meiji Japan that was already disappearing when he was born in 1879. I think about the Japan I knew over sixty years ago—how it changed so dramatically in these years—and I can sympathize with Nagai. However, if you are not familiar with Tokyo’s old time geography, if you have no image of what Japan used to be before bullet trains, computers, iPhones and gigantic electric signs, you are going to have a hard time getting through this book or any of Nagai’s books. Nagai emphasizes painting the background at the expense of characterization and plot in most of his writing.
Seidensticker, the famous American Japanologist and translator, writes of Kafū: He was “a querulous, self-righteous man, whose social criticism rarely rose above the level of personal complaining, and whose grasp of the complex reality that is the human spirit was less than adequate; but a man, withal, whose love for his city and its traditions never wavered, and who expressed that love in prose worthy of the great classical Japanese essayists.” (p.172)
After reading the book, I understood that, given his personality, he loved autumn best, the season when everything seems to be dying, disappearing from view. Another quote sums it up pretty well, (p.105) “Perhaps it was with people as with cultures. They had to die to qualify for Kafū’s affections.” Just as insect voices were stilled, birds flew south, and plants faded, so Nagai longed for the “old days” of the Yoshiwara (prostitute quarter), of the ukiyō (floating world of less reputable people), and times when the natural world still existed within easy reach of Tokyo dwellers. He constantly recalls houses where he used to live, women that he once frequented, but later discarded. It seemed to me that he loved nothing except the vanished past; the faint odor of bygone times, even the buzzing mosquitoes of yesteryear.
Perhaps Nagai Kafū belongs in the pantheon of great Japanese writers, but due to his particular focus and style, he is least known abroad, his stories are just too local to arouse great interest among non-Japanese. His contemporaries Tanizaki Jun’ichiro and poet Ishikawa Takuboku have a more international appeal, as do older men like Mori Ogai and Natsume Sōseki, not to mention younger writers such as Kawabata Yasunari, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke and Mishima Yukio. This book is a most detailed biography, but I fear that only those deeply interested in Japanese Literature will tackle it. For them, it could be a five star book, a masterwork on this writer, but for others, probably fewer than the four stars I’ve given.
In the afternoon, on April 28, 1959, a postcard arrived at my house telling me that I would be sent to Japan as an exchange student. I still have it up in the attic, this little bit of paper that changed my life forever. Two days later, unbeknownst to me, Nagai Kafū, a famous Japanese writer, died in Tokyo. I wish I could say that there was more of a connection, but no, there isn’t. However, my experiences at a young, impressionable age, and my experiences on subsequent occasions, when I returned to teach English, when I returned twice more to Japan, and a lifetime of reading about Japan, surrounding myself with Japanese art, loving kabuki, and listening to enka, has given me now, at a rather advanced age, a feeling of nostalgia for the Japan I knew as a teenager, for the Japan described by dozens of writers, both Japanese and foreign, the older Japan that I never even knew. And that’s my connection to this book, which is divided in two parts: one being the life and work of Nagai Kafū, and the other being the excellent translations of some stories and novel excerpts.
Nagai was the Mr. Nostalgia of Japanese literature. He was a born-and-bred Tokyoite who spent his loner-style life among the lower classes, consorting with prostitutes, geishas, kept women, noodle sellers, barbers, actresses, and samisen teachers. This underbelly of Japanese life attracted him and its disappearance created a deep despondency in him that caused him to withdraw from the world for long periods. He seems to have relentlessly pursued the past, the life of pre-Meiji Japan that was already disappearing when he was born in 1879. I think about the Japan I knew over sixty years ago—how it changed so dramatically in these years—and I can sympathize with Nagai. However, if you are not familiar with Tokyo’s old time geography, if you have no image of what Japan used to be before bullet trains, computers, iPhones and gigantic electric signs, you are going to have a hard time getting through this book or any of Nagai’s books. Nagai emphasizes painting the background at the expense of characterization and plot in most of his writing.
Seidensticker, the famous American Japanologist and translator, writes of Kafū: He was “a querulous, self-righteous man, whose social criticism rarely rose above the level of personal complaining, and whose grasp of the complex reality that is the human spirit was less than adequate; but a man, withal, whose love for his city and its traditions never wavered, and who expressed that love in prose worthy of the great classical Japanese essayists.” (p.172)
After reading the book, I understood that, given his personality, he loved autumn best, the season when everything seems to be dying, disappearing from view. Another quote sums it up pretty well, (p.105) “Perhaps it was with people as with cultures. They had to die to qualify for Kafū’s affections.” Just as insect voices were stilled, birds flew south, and plants faded, so Nagai longed for the “old days” of the Yoshiwara (prostitute quarter), of the ukiyō (floating world of less reputable people), and times when the natural world still existed within easy reach of Tokyo dwellers. He constantly recalls houses where he used to live, women that he once frequented, but later discarded. It seemed to me that he loved nothing except the vanished past; the faint odor of bygone times, even the buzzing mosquitoes of yesteryear.
Perhaps Nagai Kafū belongs in the pantheon of great Japanese writers, but due to his particular focus and style, he is least known abroad, his stories are just too local to arouse great interest among non-Japanese. His contemporaries Tanizaki Jun’ichiro and poet Ishikawa Takuboku have a more international appeal, as do older men like Mori Ogai and Natsume Sōseki, not to mention younger writers such as Kawabata Yasunari, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke and Mishima Yukio. This book is a most detailed biography, but I fear that only those deeply interested in Japanese Literature will tackle it. For them, it could be a five star book, a masterwork on this writer, but for others, probably fewer than the four stars I’ve given.
November 25, 2016
Kafu is a little know writer of novellas about the Edo period in Tokyo, particularly near the red light district along the Sumida River (now bulldozed and filled in and nothing but a memory). Seidensticker, who translated a ton of Japanese texts into English and wrote other books about Japan and Japanese culture, explores the interesting life of this recluse who shunned attention but who left us some of the most piquant and vivid, if melancholy, accounts of this period of Japanese history before the calamitous 20th century changed Japan forever. A beautiful biography and a great introduction to Edo for those that are interested in Ukiyo-e and Japan.
March 9, 2021
I was pleasantly surprised by this book, though I really had no reason to be since Kafu’s life was by all accounts “colorful,” Edward Seidensticker wrote the book, and his various translations of Kafu’s work are exceptional. Seidensticker was sometimes uncomplimentary of Kafu’s work in the biographical sections of this book, but the translations he included here were in all cases wonderful. Of course, Kafu wrote at a time when fiction was judged by different standards, but what I read here, and in other book-length works of his, was impactful. Then again, I like “quiet” stories with strong descriptive and atmospheric elements. This was perfect for me.
March 1, 2022
Both a study of Nagai Kafu and a translation of several important stories.
As Ueda Makoto has said, "among leading novelists of modern Japan, no one has written more about the lives of geisha, prostitutes, mistresses, and other downtrodden women than Tokyo-born Nagai Kafu (1879-1959). His interest in them stemmed from sympathy, but was also motivated by a strong interest in European Naturalist literature, especially the works of Zola and Maupassant.
An equally important subject for Kafu was nostalgia for the Edo (Tokyo) of the past, the last vestiges of which he sought out in the downtown parts of Tokyo along the Sumida River. Kafu was a great flaneur who daily made long walks through the city, inspired by Baudelaire (Le spleen de Paris) and late-Edo gesaku fiction (Tamenaga Shunsui).
These two interests came together in his stories about the pleasure quarters of Tokyo where he nostalgically detected the remains of a bygone era. Kafu was also a great stylist, who experimented with the form of his novels, and who was more than any other Japanese author informed about modern European (especially French) literature. He had a long, direct experience of the West, having lived in the U.S. and France from 1903 to 1908.
After his return to Japan, he became an anti-Naturalist and expressed his anger about the modern horrors of the Meiji-period. From 1910 he was for six years Professor of Literature at Keio University where he founded the magazine Mita Bungaku (in which he introduced Tanizaki Junichiro), but after that he gradually retired from public life, only looking for company in the pleasure quarters.
Among his representative novels are Udekurabe (Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale), Sumidagawa (The River Sumida) and Bokuto kidan (A Strange Tale from East of the River). Kafu's major novellas and essays are central to the canon of modern Japanese fiction. Kafu was one of the first modern Japanese writers who, upon intensive contact with the West, managed to create a literature that was on the one hand based on tradition and on the other hand marked by universalism. In 1952 Kafu received the Order of Culture.
Besides a number of short stories (such as the interesting "The Peony Garden" and "The Decoration"), Seidensticker has translated two complete novels, The River Sumida and A Strange Tale from East of the River. A wonderful book that is unfortunately out of print (the same is true for the two wonderful novels mentioned above) - a shame as Nagai Kafu is one of the greatest Japanese authors of the 20th century.
See my review of "A Strange Tale of East of the River" at my blog: https://adblankestijn.blogspot.com/20...
As Ueda Makoto has said, "among leading novelists of modern Japan, no one has written more about the lives of geisha, prostitutes, mistresses, and other downtrodden women than Tokyo-born Nagai Kafu (1879-1959). His interest in them stemmed from sympathy, but was also motivated by a strong interest in European Naturalist literature, especially the works of Zola and Maupassant.
An equally important subject for Kafu was nostalgia for the Edo (Tokyo) of the past, the last vestiges of which he sought out in the downtown parts of Tokyo along the Sumida River. Kafu was a great flaneur who daily made long walks through the city, inspired by Baudelaire (Le spleen de Paris) and late-Edo gesaku fiction (Tamenaga Shunsui).
These two interests came together in his stories about the pleasure quarters of Tokyo where he nostalgically detected the remains of a bygone era. Kafu was also a great stylist, who experimented with the form of his novels, and who was more than any other Japanese author informed about modern European (especially French) literature. He had a long, direct experience of the West, having lived in the U.S. and France from 1903 to 1908.
After his return to Japan, he became an anti-Naturalist and expressed his anger about the modern horrors of the Meiji-period. From 1910 he was for six years Professor of Literature at Keio University where he founded the magazine Mita Bungaku (in which he introduced Tanizaki Junichiro), but after that he gradually retired from public life, only looking for company in the pleasure quarters.
Among his representative novels are Udekurabe (Rivalry: A Geisha's Tale), Sumidagawa (The River Sumida) and Bokuto kidan (A Strange Tale from East of the River). Kafu's major novellas and essays are central to the canon of modern Japanese fiction. Kafu was one of the first modern Japanese writers who, upon intensive contact with the West, managed to create a literature that was on the one hand based on tradition and on the other hand marked by universalism. In 1952 Kafu received the Order of Culture.
Besides a number of short stories (such as the interesting "The Peony Garden" and "The Decoration"), Seidensticker has translated two complete novels, The River Sumida and A Strange Tale from East of the River. A wonderful book that is unfortunately out of print (the same is true for the two wonderful novels mentioned above) - a shame as Nagai Kafu is one of the greatest Japanese authors of the 20th century.
See my review of "A Strange Tale of East of the River" at my blog: https://adblankestijn.blogspot.com/20...
May 5, 2025
DNF. Got most of the way through the biography though.
Chronologically diffuse and confused. Introduces the same texts many times over, never with dates, resulting in a distracting sense of double vision. Lack of focus made it surprisingly difficult to follow along. Often openly derisive of Kafu and his works, with each and all of his books getting comments ranging from "garrulous and wanting in precision" or "not true to his principles" to straight up calling his books "bad". Coming directly from John Nathan's excellent biography of Mishima, this was a huge letdown.
The translations may be good (I wouldn't know), but my interest in Kafu and in Japanese literature in general stems from a desire to read the texts in the original, so translations have little effect on my appreciation of this book. If I have to write an essay about the man I might borrow it again, but in general I didn't think it worth the time.
Chronologically diffuse and confused. Introduces the same texts many times over, never with dates, resulting in a distracting sense of double vision. Lack of focus made it surprisingly difficult to follow along. Often openly derisive of Kafu and his works, with each and all of his books getting comments ranging from "garrulous and wanting in precision" or "not true to his principles" to straight up calling his books "bad". Coming directly from John Nathan's excellent biography of Mishima, this was a huge letdown.
The translations may be good (I wouldn't know), but my interest in Kafu and in Japanese literature in general stems from a desire to read the texts in the original, so translations have little effect on my appreciation of this book. If I have to write an essay about the man I might borrow it again, but in general I didn't think it worth the time.
June 28, 2018
I don't know why, but Seidensticker seems to dislike Kafu's non-dramatic style of narrative, which makes the book permeated with negative comments that hinder my willingness to go on reading.
September 24, 2022
The plan is to one day visit Zōshigaya Cemetery and burn incense at Kafu’s and Hearn’s ohaku. Tokyo is not on itinerary this year but next for certain.
June 13, 2012
Wondrous collection of short stories---much better in Japanese especially "The Peony Garden" and "Sumida Gawa"
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews