Mori Ogai

Mori Ogai's statue at his birthhouse in Tsuwano-cho

Mori Ogai (森鷗外 / 森鴎外 Mori Ōgai, February 17, 1862 - July 8, 1922) was a Japanese physician, translator, novelist and poet. He was born in Tsuwano, Iwami province (now Shimane prefecture) into a family of doctors. Gan (1911–13, Wild Geese) is considered as his major work.

Contents

1 Career
2 Selected works
3 Translations
4 Source
5 See also
6 External links

Career

Mori was sent to study in Germany (Leipzig, Dresden, Munich, and Berlin) by the Meiji government in 1884 where he stayed for four years. Upon his return he assumed a high rank as a medical doctor in the Japanese army. As a physician, Mori specialized in beriberi, an ailment caused by a deficiency of thiamine. He wrongly believed that beriberi is a infectious disease and refused to implement the dietry policy which was adopted in Japanese Navy. His questionable decisions during the Russo-Japanese War are said to have caused the lives of ten of thousands of Japanese soldiers to the beriberi disease. In 1907, Mori became Surgeon-General, and in 1916 he was appointed director of the Imperial Museum.

It was during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5) that Mori started keeping a poetic diary. After the war, he began holding tanka writing parties that included several noted poets such as Yosano Akiko. As an author, Mori is considered one of the leading writers of the Meiji period, known for works including Maihime (舞姫, The Dancing Girl, 1890), describing an affair between a Japanese man and a German woman, Sanshō Dayū (山椒大夫), and Takasebune (高瀬舟). He also produced translations of the works of Goethe, Schiller, Ibsen, Hans Christian Andersen, and Hauptmann, and instituted modern literary criticism in Japan, based on the aesthetic theories of Karl von Hartmann. Most of his later work is biographical or historical.

Ōgai's most popular novel, Gan (1911–13; The Wild Geese), is set to 1881 Tokyo and was filmed by Shiro Toyoda in 1953 as The Mistress.

Mori's real name was Rintarō (林太郎). Ōgai is correctly written 鷗外 but many computers cannot properly display this kanji and so 鴎外 is often used in its place.

Mori Ogai's statue at his house in Kokura Kita ward, Kitakyushu

A house which Mori lived in is preserved in Kokura Kita ward in Kitakyushu, not far from Kokura station. Here he wrote Kokura Nikki (Kokura diary). His birthhouse is also preserved in Tsuwano. The two one-story houses are remarkably similar in size and in their traditional Japanese style.

One of Mori's daughters, Mori Mari, influenced the Yaoi movement in contemporary Japanese literature.

Selected works

Maihime (1890, 舞姫, The Dancing Girl)
Utakata no ki (1890, Foam on the Waves)
Fumizukai (1891, The Courier)
Ita sekusuarisu (1909, Vita Sexualis)
Seinen (1910)
Gan (1911–13, The Wild Geese)
Okitsu Yagoemon no isho (1912, The Last Testament of Okitsu Yagoemon)
Sanshō Dayū (1915, 山椒大夫, Sanshō the Steward)
Shibue Chūsai (1916)
Takasebune (1916, 高瀬舟, The Boat on the Takase River)

Translations

The Historical Fiction of Mori Ôgai, ed. David A. Dilworth and J. Thomas Rimer. 1977. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991. A one-volume paperback edition of an earlier two-volume collection of stories.
Modern Japanese Stories: An Anthology, ed. Ivan Morris. 1961. Rutland, Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle, 1966. Contains "Under Reconstruction."
Sansho-Dayu and Other Short Stories, trans. Tsutomu Fukuda. Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1970.
Vita Sexualis, trans. Kazuji Ninomiya and Sanford Goldstein. 1972. Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 200.
The Wild Geese, trans. Ochiai Kingo and Sanford Goldstein. Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 1959.
The Wild Goose, trans. Burton Watson. 1995. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies, 1998.
Youth and Other Stories (collection of stories), ed. J. Thomas Rimer. 1994. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995

Source

[Japanese Literature Home Page biography]

External links

[e-texts of Mori Ōgai 's works] at Aozora bunko