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The Bad Seed

The Bad Seed is a 1954 horror novel by American writer William March, the last of his major works published before his death.

Nominated for the 1955 National Book Award for Fiction, The Bad Seed tells the story of a mother's realization that her young daughter is a murderer. Its enormous critical and commercial success was largely realized after March's death only one month after publication.

In 1954, the novel was adapted into a successful and long-running Broadway play by Maxwell Anderson and into an Academy Award-nominated film directed by Mervyn LeRoy in 1956.

Synopsis
Eight-year-old Rhoda Penmark appears to be what every little girl brought up in a loving home should be. Outwardly, she is charming, polite and intelligent beyond her years. To most adults, she is every parent's dream: obedient, well-groomed, and compliant. She reads books, does her homework, and practices her piano scales, all without being asked by her parents. However, most children keep their distance from her, sensing there is something not quite right about her. This is especially true for the students at Fern Grammar School, her new school in a small town named Benedict.

Rhoda is the only child of Christine Penmark and her husband Kenneth, who goes away on business. Christine begins to notice that Rhoda acts strangely toward Claude Daigle, one of her classmates, who mysteriously drowns at a school picnic later. She then notices that Rhoda is indifferent to the boy's death, which is presumed accidental, albeit with one unexplained detail: his face was imprinted with crescent-shaped marks. Christine learns that Rhoda quarreled with Claude over a medal award for perfect penmanship that the boy won, but which Rhoda believed she deserved. She also lied about the last time she saw Claude.

Faced with Rhoda's deception, Christine begins to reevaluate troubling incidents from the past. After Rhoda had begged her parents for a pet dog, she quickly became bored with it, and the animal died in what she described as an "accidental fall" from the window. Clara Post, an elderly neighbor, had promised her a special snow globe upon her death, and soon after, suffered a fatal fall while babysitting Rhoda, who now proudly owns the trinket. Additionally, Rhoda was once expelled from a school for repeatedly being caught lying to teachers and staff who described her as a "cold, self-sufficient child".

Disturbed by the idea that her daughter might indeed be the one behind all these tragedies, Christine begins investigating and discovers that she herself was adopted by her parents, including investigative journalist Richard Bravo, when she was found as the sole survivor of a murdering spree. Christine's birth mother was Bessie Denker, a notorious serial killer who died in the electric chair, of whom Christine has vague memories. Christine blames herself for passing on the murderous "bad seed" gene to her child, yet clings to the hope that Rhoda might have killed Claude by accident. She writes a series of tortured letters to her husband about Rhoda but never mails them in fear of what may happen if someone reads the letters and goes to the authorities. In all this investigation, Christine slowly begins to deteriorate and become a shell of her former self, which is immediately noticed by Monica Breedlove, Christine's friend and neighbor.

Leroy Jessup, the maintenance man who lives and works at the Penmarks' apartment complex, is the only other adult besides Christine who sees through Rhoda's facade. Believing she simply has a mean streak, Leroy relentlessly teases her, pretending to believe that she is responsible for Claude's death. Leroy's wife Thelma warns him about harassing the girl, but he refuses to listen. Rhoda is unfazed by his teasing until Leroy teases that she must've used her cleated shoes to beat Claude, explaining the crescent-shaped marks left on the boy's face. Immediately after, he realizes he stumbled onto the truth by the way Rhoda reacts to his accusations. Afraid he will expose her, she waits until Leroy is asleep and lights his mattress ablaze before locking him inside. A horrified Christine witnesses the murder from a distance; it occurs so quickly she has no time to get help. Others believe his death to be accidental, from falling asleep while smoking, thus starting the fire.

Christine confronts Rhoda, who initially attempts to lie and manipulate her mother before finally confessing to killing Claude, Leroy, and Clara Post, all the while expressing no remorse. Christine fears her daughter will end up like Bessie Denker in the electric chair. In a desperate attempt to prevent Rhoda from killing anyone else, Christine secretly gives her sleeping pills so she will die painlessly in an overdose. She then shoots herself in the head with a pistol that was in her nightstand.

Christine later dies in the hospital. However, a neighbor had heard the gunshot and saved Rhoda. A heartbroken Kenneth returns home, believing Christine had suffered a nervous breakdown. Because Christine had destroyed her unsent letters and other evidence, Rhoda is free to kill again.

Major characters

 * Rhoda Penmark: Rhoda is portrayed as a high-functioning sociopath, although the term was not widely used at the time the book was written. She has no conscience, and will not hesitate to harm or kill whoever stands in her way at achieving her goal. She sees murder as something that is necessary if she believes her target to be a potential threat. An adept manipulator, Rhoda can easily charm and mislead adults, while eliciting fear and revulsion from other children, who can sense that something is wrong with her. It is implied that she inherited these traits from her maternal grandmother Bessie Denker, who was a famous convicted serial killer. By the time her mother Christine puts the facts together, Rhoda has already killed at least two people and a dog. She also kills Leroy Jessup, the apartment building's live-in gardener. When Christine uncovers Rhoda's dark secret, she attempts murder-suicide by Rhoda by giving her enough pills to cause an overdose and shooting herself however proves to be unsuccessful when their landlady saves Rhoda's life. Rhoda is indifferent to her mother's suicide and it is implied she will follow in the footsteps of her infamous grandmother.
 * Christine Penmark: The young and empathetic mother of Rhoda Penmark. Christine is described as very beautiful. She has Nordic feminine features that are traced to her biological father. She is well-groomed, intelligent, and despite being a traditional 1950s homemaker, she is very independent. She slowly pieces together that Rhoda is a killer. Christine doesn't know whether she should love or hate her daughter, but knows that Rhoda will kill again if something is not done. She discovers that her own biological mother was Bessie Denker, an infamous serial killer who was executed. In the end, Christine finally attempts to kill Rhoda to stop her, then shoots herself in the head.
 * Leroy Jessup: The crude maintenance man who works for the elderly landlady, Monica Breedlove. He is a depraved individual and sees Rhoda as a kindred spirit. Due to his crude mind and dark sense of humor, he is the only adult character, other than Christine, who notices that Rhoda is unlike other children and enjoys teasing her. Rhoda only reacts to his teasing when he claims to have the shoes with which she killed Claude. When the realization sets in that she actually did kill Claude, he denies ever having them. Shortly thereafter, he is locked inside his makeshift shed by Rhoda, who sets the shed on fire, leaving him inside to die.
 * Monica Breedlove: The Penmarks' landlady and Christine's confidante, she is an older pretentious woman who considers herself to be somewhat of a psychotherapist and claims she was once examined by Sigmund Freud. Monica adores Rhoda, whom she believes to be extraordinary, even wishing the child were hers. Monica knows that Christine is upset but suspects she is either ill, or that her marriage with Kenneth is under strain. Monica never discovers the truth about Rhoda and is confused as to why Christine would kill herself.
 * Reginald Tasker: A writer and friend to Monica, he provides Christine with information about an infamous serial killer, Bessie Denker. He is becomes friends and later is to attracted to Christine. He informs Christine that the man she has known as her biological father, Richard Bravo, worked diligently on the Denker case. Tasker mentions that Bessie Denker's youngest daughter was her only surviving family.
 * Claude Daigle: The only child of Hortense and Dwight Daigle, he is described as a timid and sensitive boy who rarely stood up to others. He is shown being fussed over by his anxious mother at the start of the novel and was last seen running away from Rhoda towards the lake at the school picnic. It turns out that when he refused to give Rhoda the penmanship medal award he won, she repeatedly hit him so hard with her shoe that she knocked him unconscious. He then fell off the pier and quickly drowned.
 * Hortense Daigle: Mother of Claude Daigle, presented as smothering and over-attentive. A plain, large woman who believes that the Fern sisters and others look down on her for having once been a hairdresser and marrying late in life, she is devastated by her son's death and turns to alcohol as a source of comfort. She senses that Rhoda knows something about or had something to do with her son's death and seeks her out twice to cajole answers.
 * Bessie Denker: A well-known (fictional) serial killer. She is the biological mother of Christine Penmark and the grandmother of Rhoda Penmark. Christine faintly remembers living with her biological family and escaping from her mother. Denker never makes a physical appearance in the novel, having long ago been executed. The character's life and murderous history is thoroughly described in the notes of Reginald Tasker. Denker's career is based very roughly on the real-life careers of Belle Gunness and Jane Toppan. The description of her execution in the electric chair is based on that of Ruth Snyder.

Minor characters

 * Kenneth Penmark:The father of Rhoda and husband of Christine. Kenneth is away on business when the novel begins and he does not return until the very end, after his wife's suicide. Kenneth never discovers the truth about Rhoda or the reasoning behind Christine's suicide and attempted murder of Rhoda as his wife neglected to leave him any information, even confidentially, and had destroyed her earlier unsent letters.
 * Emory Wages: Monica Breedlove's brother, who lives with his sister. He flirts with Christine at different social gatherings.
 * Claudia Fern: The Fern sister who reprimands Rhoda for harassing Claude the day of the picnic. She describes the events the day of the picnic to Christine along with her two other sisters. She informs Christine that Rhoda will not be welcome to attend their school the following term.
 * Octavia Fern: Fern sister who explains to Christine why the sisters did not ask the Penmarks to donate money for a flower arrangement to be presented at Claude's funeral.
 * Burgess Fern: Fern sister in charge of enrollment at the Fern School. She would not hold the penmanship medal for Claude Daigle on the fateful day of the school picnic.
 * Richard Bravo: Christine's adopted father, who was killed in an airplane crash during World War II. He was a well-known columnist and war correspondent, performing great research in the "Bessie Denker" case. He never told Christine she was adopted or that Bessie Denker was her biological mother.
 * Dwight Daigle: Father of Claude Daigle. He tries to help his anguished wife and keep her under control as she suffers from the death of their son. The character's forename was changed from Dwight in the novel to Henry for the 1956 play and film, and to Fred for the 1985 television adaptation.
 * Mrs. Forsythe: An elderly woman said to have been a great beauty in her youth. She is thought by Monica to be a bit simple-minded. Like most of the other adults, she is enchanted by Rhoda, and she often babysits her (and even offers to take in Rhoda after Christine's death). Rhoda never harms Mrs. Forsythe because she does not have anything Rhoda wants.
 * Thelma Jessup: The wife of Leroy Jessup. She is described as big and dull, yet she is astute enough to warn Leroy that he is asking for trouble if he continues to tease Rhoda.
 * Belle Blackwell: Teacher of the Sunday school Rhoda attends who gives Rhoda a copy of Elsie Dinsmore.
 * Clara Post: The elderly woman who lived with her daughter Edna in the same apartment house as the Penmarks in Baltimore, Maryland. She was charmed by Rhoda, then six years old, and befriended her, promising that when she died Rhoda could have her floating opal ball pendant. She fell to her death in Rhoda's presence when Edna was out. Edna was skeptical of Rhoda's story about her mother's death and did not invite the Penmarks to the funeral or speak to them afterwards.

Nature versus nurture
In the decade the novel was published, juvenile delinquency began to be far more common, or at least more extensively reported and documented. Compared to earlier history, the idea of child crimes was a new phenomenon. A controversy about nature and nurture arose as psychiatric explanations were proposed for juvenile delinquency, with the debate being whether inborn tendencies ("nature") are more or less important than environmental factors ("nurture") in explaining deviant behavior.

Supporters of the “nature” side suggested that some people are born evil or with malicious tendencies. The idea that nature prevails over nurture is implied in The Bad Seed. March incorporates the notion that a murderous genetic trait is being passed down through the generations. Within the plot of the story, Rhoda is a serial murderer just like her grandmother, having inherited the murderous gene. Rhoda had been brought up as a privileged child; she was nurtured emotionally and physically and thus a broken home life was not to blame for her actions. Tasker hints and suggests at the idea of nature taking effect when he quotes that "some people are just born evil", when discussing Denker with Christine.

Psychologist Robert D. Hare, who argues that the evidence suggests psychopathy is an inborn trait, discusses The Bad Seed in his 1993 non-fiction book Without Conscience. A lengthy quote from the novel opens Hare's book, describing in March's words how most decent individuals are not by nature suspicious and thus unable to understand or anticipate the acts of evil and depravity that some people are capable of committing. Later in his book, Hare argues that March's novel is a "remarkably true to life" portrayal of the development of psychopathy in childhood, illustrating both Rhoda's callous use of others to serve her own ends as well as Christine's growing helplessness and desperation as she realizes the extent of her daughter's behavior.

Reviews

 * James Kelly, New York Times:
 * "Let it be said quickly: William March knows where human fears and secrets are buried. He announced it in Company K, a novel published twenty years ago and equaled only by Dos Passos' Three Soldiers as a sampling of men at war. He has proved it again and again in the other novels and short stories, all of them floored and walled in what Clifton Fadiman decided to call "Psychological acumen". But nowhere is this gift better displayed than in The Bad Seed — the portrayal of a coldly evil, murderous child and what she does to both victims and family. In the author's hands this is adequate material for an absolutely first class novel of moral bewilderments and responsibilities nearest the heart of our decade."

 * Dan Wickenden, New York Herald Tribune:
 * "Dark, original, ultimately appalling, William March's extraordinary new novel is, on the obvious level, a straightforward, technically accomplished story of suspense. The manner of its telling — the dispassionate, exact, almost starched prose, with its occasional glints of sardonic humor — is an impressive achievement in itself. It lends some credibility to a narrative against which the imagination rebels; and towards the end, as horror is piled upon horror, it saves the book from falling headlong into absurdity... This is a novel bound to arouse strong responses, to generate vehement discussion, and so not easily to be forgotten."

 * August Derleth, Chicago Sunday Tribune:
 * "The Bad Seed would have been a stronger novel without this false premise — the granddaughter of a murderess is no more likely to be a murderess than the granddaughter of a seamstress, or anyone else. Apart from this flaw, however, The Bad Seed is a novel of suspense and mounting horror, which the reader who can close his eyes to March's unnecessary premise will enjoy as the work of one of the most satisfying of American novelists."

 * L.A.G. Strong, The Spectator (UK):
 * "The Bad Seed is terrifyingly good, not only because its theme is worked out so powerfully, but because every character is convincing. One has to believe that these appalling things took place exactly as the author says they did."

Broadway play
Maxwell Anderson adapted the book for the stage almost immediately after its publication. Anderson had previously won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award in 1935 and 1936 for his plays Winterset and High Tor, as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1933 for his play Both Your Houses. Reginald Denham directed the play using Anderson's script. The play opened on Broadway on December 8, 1954, at the 46th Street Theatre (now the Richard Rodgers Theatre), less than a year after the publication of the novel.

On April 25, 1955, the play transferred to the Coronet Theatre (now the Eugene O'Neill Theatre), where it completed its successful run of 334 performances on September 27, 1955. Nancy Kelly, the actress who played Christine, won the 1955 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. The audience made claims that Patty McCormack, the child actress who played Rhoda, was the most memorable character.

1956 film
Mervyn LeRoy was the director of the 1956 movie. In LeRoy's Hollywood career, he produced and or directed over 70 films including Little Caesar and Little Women. Nancy Kelly, Patty McCormack and most of the original cast acted in the 1956 movie. The ending of the 1956 film was changed from that of the novel and the play to comply with the Hollywood Production Code. Rhoda is suddenly struck and killed by lightning when she goes back to the scene of her crime to retrieve the medal (allowing an interpretation of divine intervention), while Christine survives her suicide attempt. During the closing credits, LeRoy added a light-hearted sequence of Nancy Kelly, Christine, holding Patty McCormack, Rhoda, over her leg and spanking her –possibly to remind audiences that this is just a movie.

1985 film
The Bad Seed was remade as a television movie in 1985, adapted by George Eckstein and directed by Paul Wendkos and kept the novel's original ending but changed other details, including some forenames (i.e. Claude Daigle → Mark Daigle, Hortense Daigle → Rita Daigle, Claudia Fern → Alice Fern) and added a scene in which young Christine escapes into a cornfield from her own sociopathic mother, Bessie Denker.

This version starred Blair Brown as Christine, Lynn Redgrave as Monica, David Ogden Stiers as Emory (whose character is hinted to be a closeted homosexual), David Carradine as Leroy, and Chad Allen as Mark Daigle (whose character was never seen before, only referenced). Carrie Wells played the title character, whose name was changed from Rhoda to Rachel. The TV-movie version was considered inferior to both the play and original film by critics.

2018 film
In December 2017, Deadline Hollywood reported that Rob Lowe would direct and star in a television remake for the Lifetime network. This version of The Bad Seed first ran on Lifetime on September 9, 2018, and was watched by 1.87 million viewers, placing it in the top ten most-watched cable programs on that date. However, the production received mixed reviews.

A sequel, The Bad Seed Returns, was released in 2022.

title: The Bad Seed


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Kōbō Abe

Kōbō Abe (安部 公房), pen name of Kimifusa Abe (安部 公房), was a Japanese writer, playwright, musician, photographer, and inventor. He is best known for his 1962 novel The Woman in the Dunes that was made into an award-winning film by Hiroshi Teshigahara in 1964. Abe has often been compared to Franz Kafka for his modernist sensibilities and his surreal, often nightmarish explorations of individuals in contemporary society.

Biography
Abe was born on March 7, 1924 in Kita, Tokyo, Japan and grew up in Mukden (now Shenyang) in Manchuria. Abe's family was in Tokyo at the time due to his father's year of medical research in Tokyo. His mother had been raised in Hokkaido, while he experienced childhood in Manchuria. This triplicate assignment of origin was influential to Abe, who told Nancy Shields in a 1978 interview, "I am essentially a man without a hometown. This may be what lies behind the 'hometown phobia' that runs in the depth of my feelings. All things that are valued for their stability offend me." As a child, Abe was interested in insect-collecting, mathematics, and reading. His favorite authors were Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Edgar Allan Poe.

Abe returned to Tokyo briefly in April 1940 to study at Seijo High School, but a lung condition forced his return to Mukden, where he read Jaspers, Heidegger, Dostoyevsky, and Edmund Husserl. Abe began to study medicine at Tokyo Imperial University in 1943, partially out of respect for his father, but also because "[t]hose students who specialized in medicine were exempted from becoming soldiers. My friends who chose the humanities were killed in the war." He returned to Manchuria around the end of World War II. Specifically, Abe left the Tokyo University Medical School in October 1944, returning to his father's clinic in Mukden. That winter, his father died of eruptive typhus. Returning to Tokyo with his father's ashes, Abe reentered the medical school. Abe started writing novellas and short stories during his last year in university. He graduated in 1948 with a medical degree, joking once that he was allowed to graduate only on the condition that he would not practice.

In 1945 Abe married Machi Yamada, an artist and stage director, and the couple saw successes within their fields in similar time frames. Initially, they lived in an old barracks within a bombed-out area of the city center. Abe sold pickles and charcoal on the street to pay their bills. The couple joined a number of artistic study groups, such as Yoru no Kai (Group of the Night or The Night Society) and Nihon Bungaku Gakko (Japanese Literary School). Their daughter, Abe Neri, was born in 1954.

As the postwar period progressed, Abe's stance as an intellectual pacifist led to his joining the Japanese Communist Party, with which he worked to organize laborers in poor parts of Tokyo. Soon after receiving the Akutagawa Prize in 1951, Abe began to feel the constraints of the Communist Party's rules and regulations alongside doubts about what meaningful artistic works could be created in the genre of "socialist realism." By 1956, Abe began writing in solidarity with the Polish workers who were protesting against their Communist government, drawing the Communist Party's ire. The criticism reaffirmed his stance: "The Communist Party put pressure on me to change the content of the article and apologize. But I refused. I said I would never change my opinion on the matter. This was my first break with the Party." The next year, Abe traveled to Eastern Europe for the 20th Convention of the Soviet Communist Party. He saw little of interest there, but the arts gave him some solace. He visited Kafka's house in Prague, read Rilke and Karel Čapek, reflected on his idol Lu Xun, and was moved by a Mayakovsky play in Brno.

The Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 disgusted Abe. He attempted to leave the Communist Party, but resignations from the party were not accepted at the time. In 1960, he participated in the Anpo Protests against revision of the US-Japan Security Treaty as part of the pan-ideological Young Japan Society. He later wrote a play about the protests, The Day the Stones Speak, which was staged several times in Japan and China in 1960 and 1961. In the summer of 1961, Abe joined a group of other authors in criticizing the cultural policies of the Communist Party. He was forcibly expelled from the party the following year. His political activity came to an end in 1967 in the form of a statement published by himself, Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata, and Jun Ishikawa, protesting the treatment of writers, artists, and intellectuals in Communist China. According to translator John Nathan, this statement led to the falling-out between Abe and fellow writer Kenzaburō Ōe.

His experiences in Manchuria were also deeply influential on his writing, imprinting terrors and fever dreams that became surrealist hallmarks of his works. In his recollections of Mukden, these markers are evident: "The fact is, it may not have been trash in the center of the marsh at all; it may have been crows. I do have a memory of thousands of crows flying up from the swamp at dusk, as if the surface of the swamp were being lifted up into the air." The trash of the marsh was a truth of life, as were the crows, yet Abe's recollections of them tie them distinctively. Further experiences with the swamp centered around its use as a staking ground for condemned criminals with "[their] heads—now food for crows—appearing suddenly out of the darkness and disappearing again, terrified and attracted to us." These ideas are present in much of Abe's work.

Career
Abe was first published as a poet in 1947 with Mumei-shishū ("Poems of an unknown poet"), which he paid for himself, and as a novelist the following year with Owarishi michi no shirube ni ("The Road Sign at the End of the Street"), which established his reputation. When he received the Akutagawa Prize in 1951, his ability to continue publishing was confirmed. Though he did much work as an avant-garde novelist and playwright, it was not until the publication of The Woman in the Dunes in 1962 that Abe won widespread international acclaim.

In the 1960s, he collaborated with Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara on the film adaptations of The Pitfall, Woman in the Dunes, The Face of Another, and The Man Without a Map. Woman in the Dunes received widespread critical acclaim and was released only four months after Abe was expelled from the Japanese Communist Party.

In 1971, he founded the Abe Studio, an acting studio in Tokyo. Until the end of the decade, he trained performers and directed plays. The decision to found the studio came two years after he first directed his own work in 1969, a production of The Man Who Turned Into A Stick. The production's sets were designed by Abe's wife, and Hisashi Igawa starred. Abe had become dissatisfied with ability of the theatre to materialize the abstract, reducing it to a passive medium. Until 1979, he wrote, directed, and produced 14 plays at the Abe Studio. He also published two novels, Box Man (1973) and Secret Rendezvous (1977), alongside a series of essays, musical scores, and photographic exhibits. The Seibu Theater, an avant-garde theater in the new department store Parco, was allegedly established in 1973 specifically for Abe, though many other artists were given the chance to use it. The Abe Studio production of The Glasses of Love Are Rose Colored (1973) opened there. Later, the entirety of the Seibu Museum was used to present one of Abe's photographic works, An Exhibition of Images: I.

The Abe Studio provided a foil for much of the contemporary scene in Japanese theater, contrasting with the Haiyuza's conventional productions, opting to focus on dramatic, as opposed to physical, expression. It was a safe space for young performers, whom Abe would often recruit from the Toho Gakuen College in Chofu City, on the outskirts of Tokyo, where he taught. The average age of the performers in the studio was about 27 throughout the decade, as members left and fresh faces were brought in. Abe "deftly" handled issues arising from difference in stage experience.

In 1977 Abe was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Awards
Among the honors Abe received were the Akutagawa Prize in 1951 for The Crime of S. Karuma, the Yomiuri Prize in 1962 for The Woman in the Dunes, and the Tanizaki Prize in 1967 for the play Friends. Kenzaburō Ōe credited Abe and other modern Japanese authors for "[creating] the way to the Nobel Prize", which he himself won. Abe was mentioned multiple times as a possible recipient, but his early death precluded that possibility.

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title: Kōbō Abe


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Mori Ōgai

Lieutenant-General Mori Rintarō (森 林太郎), known by his pen name Mori Ōgai (森 鷗外), was a Japanese Army Surgeon general officer, translator, novelist, poet and father of famed author Mari Mori. He obtained his medical license at a very young age and introduced translated German language literary works to the Japanese public. Mori Ōgai also was considered the first to successfully express the art of western poetry in Japanese. He wrote many works and created many writing styles. The Wild Geese (1911–1913) is considered his major work. After his death, he was considered one of the leading writers who modernized Japanese literature.

His continued obstinacy to recognize beriberi as a thiamine deficiency led to the death of more than 27,000 Japanese soldiers.

Early life
Mori was born as Mori Rintarō (森 林太郎) in Tsuwano, Iwami Province (present-day Shimane Prefecture). His family were hereditary physicians to the daimyō of the Tsuwano Domain. As the eldest son, it was assumed that he would carry on the family tradition; therefore he was sent to attend classes in the Confucian classics at the domain academy, and took private lessons in rangaku ("Dutch learning", and by extension "Western learning") and Dutch.

In 1872, after the Meiji Restoration and the abolition of the domains, the Mori family relocated to Tokyo. Mori stayed at the residence of Nishi Amane, in order to receive tutoring in German, which was the primary language for medical education at the time. In 1874, he was admitted to the government medical school (the predecessor for Tokyo Imperial University's Medical School), and graduated in 1881 at the age of 19, the youngest person ever to be awarded a medical license in Japan. It was also during this time that he developed an interest in literature, reading extensively from the late-Edo period popular novels, and taking lessons in Chinese poetry and literature.

Early career
After graduation, Mori enlisted in the Imperial Japanese Army as a medical officer, hoping to specialize in military medicine and hygiene. He was commissioned as a deputy surgeon (lieutenant) in 1882. Mori was sent by the Army to study in Germany (Leipzig, Dresden, Munich, and Berlin) from 1884 to 1888. During this time, he also developed an interest in European literature. As a matter of trivia, Mori Ōgai is the first Japanese known to have ridden on the Orient Express. One of his major accomplishments was his ability to create works using a style of "translation" that he obtained from his experience in European culture.

In his stay in Germany, Ogai sometimes encountered situations where he expressed his patriotism. There was this one time that he started a public controversy against a German geologist, Dr Edmund Naumann. Dr. Naumann gave a presentation entitled “Japan” at a lecture in which he criticized Japan. In short, his criticism was that the opening of Japan to international relations was not a voluntary act, but was the result of foreign pressure. After the lecture, Naumann was said to have made a number of jokes critical of Japan in conversation with other scholars. Ogai wrote in his "Doitsu Nikki" that he made a speech to refute Naumann's comments shortly. Since it was a social occasion, the controversy seemed to have been settled, but the debate was continued when Dr. Naumann published a column in the newspaper "Allgemeine Zeitung”. According to "Wakaki hi no Mori Ogai" by Keiichiro Kobori, the controversy was focused on eight points including the origin of the Japanese people and the treatment of the Ainu people, food and clothing, public health, manners and customs, the influence of oil painting techniques on Japanese painting, Buddhism and myth, the effectiveness of the modernization movement, and the future of Japan. Of these, "the pros and cons of the modernization movement in Japan" and "the future of Japan" were the major points. Naumann pointed out that Japan opened its door to the international relations from the external forces and had easily and superficially accepted Western civilization. Furthermore, that the Japanese themselves tend to disregard the traditional culture under the justification of the modernization was his argument. Ogai made a counterargument that the introduction of Western civilization was natural, rational, and spontaneous, and important point is to identify what to westernize and what to preserve as traditional Japanese culture. Ogai carried out this controversy all in German.

After four years in Germany, Ogai felt that the realization of the mental revolution of the Japanese was his mission to be accomplished. Pushed by this idea, Ogai at first started to spend time on enlightening the public and other intellectuals by introducing the aesthetic scientific method which he obtained in the West. This took various forms such as journal articles and debates in the newspaper section. His attitude around this time period is often regarded as “belligerent and combative”. This attitude emerged out of his passion to establish the basis for criticism and the principle of induction method. Given the background of the time where a lot of policies and ideas were based on the idealistic theory, Ogai’s enthusiasm could be fully explained. One of the representative examples which reflected the radical westernization took place in the western style building called “Rokumeikan”, located in Chiyoda-ku in Tokyo. Rokumei-kan was established in 1888 by the then minister of foreign affair, Inoue Kaoru for the diplomatic purpose. His policy faced strong criticism by the right-wing nationalists and Ogai was one of those critics to the westernization without solid foundation. Ogai had dealt with various fields including urban planning, dietetics, and also lifestyle itself. His activity was supported by other nationalists and conservatives and he came to play an important role as a public educator.

Upon his return to Japan, he was promoted to surgeon first class (captain) in May 1885; after graduating from the Army War College in 1888, he was promoted to senior surgeon, second class (lieutenant colonel) in October 1889. Now a high-ranking army doctor, he pushed for a more scientific approach to medical research, even publishing a medical journal out of his own funds. His view on the modernization of Japan was distinctive from other intellectuals in the point where he was very critical to the absence of the rationale basis in the scientific field, especially medicine. That the intellectuals kept importing only the fruit of the science, not the scientific method itself was the source of concern for Ōgai because he believed that the understanding of the essence of the Western value, for specifically, the manner and the procedures of the scientific method, was vital so that in the future Japan can produce the original works of science, not the borrowings of it. This view represented his aspiration, the realization of the mental revolution of Japanese, which he had been considering after the abroad experience. As a person who studied in West, he felt the responsibility to foster the process of the modernization as if it was his mission. Another concern regarding the process of the modernization was the potential that the reckless importation of Western culture could bring the destruction to the Japanese traditions, which Ōgai found in a sense unique and original to the West. In this sense, Ōgai was a conservative who knew the value of Japanese culture in contrast to other Japanese who were in favor of radical Westernization. This attitude was reflected in his journal articles. For example, one of his works, Nihon Kaoku ron (essay on urban planning), he argued that the urban development shall not be driven by the idealistic theories in which the primary objective was to imitate the Western style, but to be processed based on the scientific evidence. As a result of his contribution, he was considered as a public educator at that time. This was, however, a source of trouble in later stage because his belligerent style was unwelcomed by his superiors. One of the reasons of his transfer to Kokura was of this conflict between a conservative administrative body and a progressive scientist. Meanwhile, he also attempted to revitalize modern Japanese literature and published his own literary journal (Shigarami sōshi, 1889–1894) and his own book of poetry (Omokage, 1889). In his writings, he was an "anti-realist", asserting that literature should reflect the emotional and spiritual domain. The short story "The Dancing Girl" (舞姫, Maihime, 1890) described an affair between a Japanese man and a German woman.

He married two times. His first wife was Toshiko Akamatsu, a daughter of Admiral Noriyoshi Akamatsu and a close friend of Nishi Amane. The couple married in 1889 and had a son who was born in 1890, Oto (from German Otto), before divorcing later that same year. The divorce was under acrimonious circumstances that irreparably ended his friendship with Nishi. His second wife, whom he married in 1902, was Shigeko Arakawa. They had four children: Mari (Marie, 1903-1987), Furitsu (Fritz, 1907-1908), who died in childhood, Annu (Anne, 1909-1998), and Rui (Louis, 1911-1991). Both daughters, Mari and Annu, as well his son Rui, became writers.

In May 1893, Mori was promoted to senior surgeon, first class (colonel).

Later career
At the start of the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, Mori was sent to Manchuria and, the following year, to Taiwan. In February 1899, he was appointed head of the Army Medical Corps with the rank of surgeon major-general and was based in Kokura, Kyūshū. His transfer was because of his responses to fellow doctors and his criticism about their fields of research in the Japanese Medical Journal of which he was editor. In 1902, he was reassigned to Tokyo. He was attached to a division in the Russo-Japanese War, based out of Hiroshima. Although Ogai was a fine artist, it is impossible to understand his thoughts on the war since he did not leave any personal document about it. This is because of his position in the army.

In 1907, Mori was promoted to Surgeon General of the Army (lieutenant general), the highest post within the Japanese Army Medical Corps, and became head of the Imperial Fine Arts Academy, which is now the Japan Art Academy. Under his leadership, an estimated 27,000 soldiers in the army died of beriberi during the Russo-Japanese War; in contrast, almost no sailors died. In 1908, the Diet of Japan appointed Mori as the head of the Beriberi Research Council to investigate the causes of the disease. In this position, he led a faction of doctors from Tokyo Imperial University who asserted that beriberi was an endemic disease caused by an unknown pathogen, ultimately ensuring that the Japanese army lagged significantly behind research worldwide and even within the nation.

In 1884, naval surgeon Takaki Kanehiro concluded his experiments showing that the disease was a thiamine deficiency caused by sailors' diet of polished white rice; this advice had been adopted by the Japanese Navy by the time of Russo-Japanese War. In 1919, the council conducted its first experiments on vitamins; this was 35 years after Takaki's experimentation in the Navy and six years after Edward Bright Vedder convinced the Western scientific community that rice bran could treat beriberi. By 1926, the Nobel Prize had been awarded to Christiaan Eijkman and Sir Frederick Hopkins for research on thiamine deficiency they had conducted in the late 19th century.

He was appointed director of the Imperial Museum when he retired in 1916. Mori Ōgai then died of renal failure and pulmonary tuberculosis six years later, aged 60.

Literary work
Although Mori did little writing from 1892 to 1902, he continued to edit a literary journal (Mezamashi gusa, 1892–1909). He also produced translations of the works of Goethe, Schiller, Ibsen, Hans Christian Andersen, and Hauptmann. It was during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) 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. Mori Ōgai helped found a new magazine called Subaru in 1909 with the help of others such as Yosano Akiko and Yosano Tekkan. His later works can be divided into three separate periods. From 1909 to 1912, he wrote mostly fiction based on his own experiences. This period includes Vita Sexualis and his most popular novel, Gan (雁), which is set in 1881 Tokyo and was filmed by Shirō Toyoda in 1953 as The Mistress.

In 1909, he released his novel Vita Sexualis, which was abruptly banned a month later. Authorities deemed his work too sexual and dangerous to public morals. Mori Ōgai, during the period he was writing Vita Sexualis, focused on making a statement regarding the current literary trends of modern Japanese literature. He approached the trend on sexuality and individualism by describing them as a link between body and soul. Ōgai points out problems concerning the art and literature world in the 19th century in his work. His writing style, depicted from the Meiji government's perspective, derived from naturalism and was implemented with his thoughts that were brought up from writers who focused on the truth. Ogai expressed his concern towards the intellectual freedom after High Treason Incident in 1910 where socialists and anarchists were unfairly executed by the court on suspicion of the assassination of the Japanese Emperor Meiji. Although he was on the side of the government as an elite army doctor, Ogai showed strong concern about the government's suppression of thought and academics, and started to call for freedom of speech. His arguments were embedded in some of his works such as “Chinmoku no to” and “Shokudo”.

His later works link his concerns with the Ministry of Education regarding the understanding of "intellectual freedom" and how they police and dictate the potential of literature. During the time from 1912 to 1916 saw a shift in his writing work from fictions to historical stories, influenced by the shocking news of Nogi Maresukea’s death, a general of the Imperial Japanese Army. In this event, Ōgai saw a revival of pre-modern ritual in the world where the individualism was gradually stemming. While the public opinion quickly labeled Nogi’s death as anachronistic, Ōgai, who was closer to Nogi, started the investigation of the spiritual background of his age by narrating the biographies of the past events. The works such as ‘Abe Ichizoku’ and ‘Shibue Chusai’ were the byproducts of his approach to the Japanese history. In these historical biographies, Ōgai depicted the men who committed ritual death, Junshi with a realistic prose. Through these works, Ōgai realized that those people who had to die were, to a certain extent, victims of the long-held practice and social expectation. Why Ōgai was inclined to investigate the history, or in other word, the identity of Japan, was partially because of his personal matter in which he was struggling to take a balance between West and East. Another reason was that he wanted to look back at the Meiji era at the very last time. After "Yasui Fujin" in 1914, his style changed from "history as it is," in which he depicted history as it had been narrated, to "story based on history," in which he somehow added his own arrangements to historical events. Followed by this change, “Shibue Chusai”, one of his best known works, was come off. From 1916 to 1921, he turned his attention to biographies of three Edo period doctors.

To elaborate on one of Ōgai’s earlier works, Dancing Girl (舞姫) was a story chronicling the love affair of a Japanese prodigy, Toyotarō, with an uneducated German woman Elis. During this affair, Elis gets pregnant, and he leaves her to return to Japan. Toyotarō spends much of his tale being torn between the life he leads in Germany with his new love, while being is pulled back to Japan by his job and family. He also spends a reasonable amount of time pondering his education, and the kind of a person it turned him into. His decision to leave her was instigated by his Japanese friend Aizawa, and the news drove Elis into madness, but despite this, Toyotarō was grateful for his friend’s meddling. Throughout the time that Dancing Girl was written, following the fall of the Tokugawa Period and the beginning of the Meiji Restoration, an isolationist mindset was a common theme amongst other authors (such as Natsume Soseki, Junichiro Tanizaki, etc.). The drastic culture shift influenced a lot of authors to focus their individuality and feelings of isolation into their works through their principle characters. In Dancing Girl in particular, the traditionalism of Tokugawa Japan and familial duty is pulling Toyotaro back, while the Meiji Japan that encouraged international knowledge and duty to that Japan is keeping him there.

Sansho Dayu was an early Japanese work written in the mid 1600's, and Ogai's rewrite of it essentially changed some minor details and the ending, wherein which the bailiff's punishment is not given as much attention as in the original, and it is not so much violent as it is politically appropriate. There are also numerous supernatural elements removed from the original story, making it palatable to a wider audience. Ogai's retelling of Sansho Dayu was made into a film, directed by Kenji Mizoguchi (1954).

Legacy
As an author, Mori is considered one of the leading writers of the Meiji period. In his literary journals, he instituted modern literary criticism in Japan, based on the aesthetic theories of Karl von Hartmann. A house which Mori lived in is preserved in Kokurakita Ward in Kitakyūshū, 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.

Because of his biographical works, most notably Shibui Chusai (1916), Ogai is credited to be the pioneer of modern biographical literature in Japanese culture.

His daughter Mari, who was nineteen years old at the time of his death, wrote extensively about her relationship with her father. Starting with her 1961 novella, A Lovers' Forest (恋人たちの森), she wrote tragic stories about love affairs between older men and boys in their late teens which influenced the creation of the Yaoi genre, stories about male-male relationships, written by women for women, that began to appear in the nineteen seventies in Japanese novels and comics. Mori's sister, Kimiko, married Koganei Yoshikiyo. Hoshi Shinichi was one of their grandsons.

Mori Ōgai former residence in Tsuwano
The house in Tsuwano where Mori Ōgai was born still exists, and is preserved as a memorial museum. This one-story structure has earthen walls and a tile roof. As the Mori family were doctors, the small room to the left of the entrance was a medicine compounding room, and larger room to the back was for seeing patients. The house faces Nishi Amane's former residence across the Tsuwano River, and is in a neighborhood called "Yokobori", so named because the outer moat of Tsuwano Castle passed to the side of the residence. Mori Ōgai lived in this building for only 11 years, from his birth until he departed for Tokyo in 1872 and the age of 11. He never returned to Tsuwano or visited this house again; however, in his writings he reminisced that his childhood home was in a compound surrounded by earthen walls and had a gate like a samurai residence. The house was relocated to another location within Tsuwano at one point, but in 1954, on the 33rd anniversary of his death, the town of Tsuwano bought it and restored it to its original site. It was designated as a National Historic Site in 1969. Due to its deterioration, it was dismantled and completely repaired in the fall of 1984.

Honours
From the Japanese Wikipedia article

Decorations

 * Order of the Golden Kite, 3rd Class (1 April 1906; Fourth Class: 20 September 1895)
 * Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure (24 April 1915; Third Class: 29 November 1904; Fourth Class: 31 May 1900; Fifth Class: 25 November 1896; Sixth Class: 24 November 1894)
 * Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun (7 November 1915; Second Class: 1 April 1906; Sixth Class: 20 September 1895)

Court ranks in the order of precedence

 * Seventh rank (February 1882)
 * Sixth rank (28 December 1891)
 * Senior sixth rank (16 December 1893)
 * Fifth rank (15 November 1895)
 * Senior fifth rank (10 July 1899)
 * Fourth rank (13 September 1904)
 * Senior fourth rank (20 October 1909)
 * Third rank (10 November 1914)
 * Senior third rank (10 May 1916)
 * Second rank (9 July 1922; posthumous)

Selected works

 * Maihime (舞姫)
 * Utakata no ki (うたかたの記)
 * Fumizukai (文づかひ)
 * Wita sekusuarisu (ヰタ・セクスアリス)
 * Seinen (青年)
 * Gan (雁)
 * Okitsu Yagoemon no isho (興津弥五右衛門の遺書)
 * Sanshō Dayū (山椒大夫)
 * Takasebune (高瀬舟)
 * Shibue Chūsai (渋江抽斎)
 * Izawa Ranken (伊澤蘭軒)
 * Hojo Katei (北条霞亭)

Film adaptations

 * The Abe Clan (1938), directed by Hisatora Kumagai
 * The Wild Geese (1953), directed by Shirō Toyoda
 * Sansho the Bailiff (1954), directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, is based on a short story by the author and is considered a milestone in Japanese movie history.
 * The Abe Clan (1995), directed by Kinji Fukasaku

Translations

 * The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868–1945 (Modern Asian Literature Series) (vol. 1), ed. J. Thomas Rimer and Van C. Gessel. 2007. Contains "The Dancing Girl," and "Down the Takase River."
 * Modern Japanese Stories: An Anthology, ed. Ivan Morris. 1961. Rutland, Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle, 1966. Contains "Under Reconstruction."
 * 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

title: Mori Ōgai


text:
Willie Hall (pianist)

Willie Hall (died 1930), best known by his nickname Drive 'Em Down, was a New Orleans blues and boogie woogie piano player. He never recorded, but has had a great influence on blues and rock and roll.

According to Champion Jack Dupree, who called Drive 'Em Down his "father" and cited him as "teaching me his style", Hall played in barrelhouses. His earthy song, "Junker's Blues", with its stories about needles and reefer and the Angola prison farm was recorded by Dupree in 1940. In 1949 Fats Domino reworked the song as "The Fat Man", the first of his 35 Top 40 hits. The melody was used by Professor Longhair for "Tipitina" and by Lloyd Price for "Lawdy Miss Clawdy." Willy DeVille recorded the song in 1990 on his Victory Mixture album. The song also directly inspired the song "Junco Partner", first recorded in 1951 by James Waynes and later also widely covered by other musicians.

title: Willie Hall (pianist)


text:
Alexander Campbell

Alexander or Alex Campbell may refer to:

Canadian

 * Alexander Campbell (Upper Canada politician) (1770–1834), farmer and political figure in Upper Canada
 * Alexander Franklin Campbell (1845–?), Canadian politician
 * Alexander Campbell (Canadian senator) (1822–1892), legislator, minister, lieutenant governor, and senator
 * Alexander B. Campbell (born 1933), premier of Prince Edward Island (1966–78)
 * Alexander Campbell (Nova Scotia politician) (1826–1909), Scottish-born notary public and political figure in Nova Scotia, Canada
 * Alexander Campbell (Newfoundland politician) (1876–1940), physician, fox rancher and political figure in Newfoundland
 * Max Campbell (Alexander Maxwell Campbell, 1888–1962), Canadian politician

American

 * Alexander Campbell (American politician) (1779–1857), Ohio politician who served in the United States Senate
 * Alexander Campbell (Illinois politician) (1814–1898), member of the Illinois House of Representatives and the United States House of Representatives
 * Alexander M. Campbell (1907–1968), Indiana lawyer and Assistant U.S. Attorney General
 * Alexander William Campbell (general) (1828–1893), American Civil War Confederate general
 * Alexander Campbell (minister) (1788–1866), American Christian reformer

British

 * Alexander Cameron Campbell, MP for Argyllshire, 1841–1843
 * Alexander Douglas Campbell (1899–1980), British Army officer
 * Sandy Campbell (British Army officer) (Alexander Fraser Campbell, 1898–1940), George Cross recipient
 * Alexander Glynn Campbell (1796–1836), MP for Fowey 1819–1820
 * Alexander Henry Campbell (1822–1918), British Conservative politician
 * Sir Alexander Campbell, 1st Baronet (1760–1824), British general
 * Alexander Campbell of Carco (died 1608), Scottish noble and prelate
 * Alexander Campbell (1756–1785), British Army officer and MP for Nairnshire
 * Alexander Campbell of Possil (1754–1849), military officer
 * Alexander Campbell (died 1832) (c. 1750–1832), British Army officer and MP for Anstruther Burghs
 * Alexander Campbell (Royal Navy officer) (1874–1957)

Australian

 * Alexander Campbell (sea captain) (1805–1890), whaler and colonist in the Port Fairy region
 * Alexander Campbell (Australian politician) (1812–1891), New South Wales politician
 * Alexander James Campbell (1846–1926), Australian politician

Other people

 * Alex Campbell (footballer) (fl. 1926–1929), footballer for Clapton Orient
 * Alex Campbell (ice hockey) (born 1948), Canadian former ice hockey player
 * Alex Campbell (singer) (1925–1987), Scottish folk singer
 * Alex Campbell (golfer) (1876–1942), Scottish golfer and golf course architect
 * Alexander Buchanan Campbell (1914–2007), Scottish architect
 * Alexander Campbell (journalist) (c. 1883–1961), English newspaper editor
 * Alexander Campbell (suspected Molly Maguire) (c. 1833–1877), Irish-born tavern owner, executed in Pennsylvania
 * Alexander Campbell (minister) (1788–1866), Religious reformer on the American Frontier
 * Alexander Campbell (musician and writer) (1764–1824), Scottish musician and miscellaneous writer
 * Alexander Campbell of Carco (died 1608), Scottish prelate, bishop of Brechin
 * Alexander Petrie Campbell (1881–1963), Australian-born religious leader
 * Alexander Campbell (dancer) (born 1986), dancer with the Royal Ballet
 * Alexander Lorne Campbell (1871–1944), Scottish architect
 * Whitey Campbell (1926–2015), American football, basketball, baseball, player and coach
 * Alexander Campbell (footballer) (1883–?), Scottish footballer

title: Alexander Campbell


text:
Gao Xingjian

Gao Xingjian (高行健 in Chinese; born January 4, 1940) is a Chinese émigré and later French naturalized novelist, playwright, critic, painter, photographer, film director, and translator who in 2000 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity." He is also a noted translator (particularly of Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco), screenwriter, stage director, and a celebrated painter.

Gao's drama is considered to be fundamentally absurdist in nature and avant-garde in his native China. Absolute Signal (1982) was a breakthrough in Chinese experimental theatre. The Bus Stop (1983) and The Other Shore (1986) had their productions halted by the Chinese government, with the acclaimed Wild Man (1985) the last work of his to be publicly performed in China. He left the country in 1987 and his plays from The Other Shore onward increasingly centered on universal (rather than Chinese) concerns, but his 1989 play Exile angered both the government for its depiction of China and the overseas democracy movement for its depiction of intellectuals. In 1997, he was granted French citizenship.

Gao's influences include classical Chinese opera, folk culture, and 20th century European drama such as Antonin Artaud, and he said in 1987 that as a writer he could be placed at the meeting point between Western and Eastern cultures. He is a very private person, however, and later claimed, "No matter whether it is in politics or literature, I do not believe in or belong to any party or school, and this includes nationalism and patriotism." His prose works tend to be less celebrated in China but are highly regarded elsewhere in Europe and the West, with Soul Mountain singled out in the Nobel Prize announcement.

Early life
Born in Ganzhou, Jiangxi, during wartime China in 1940 (Gao's original paternal ancestral home town is in Taizhou, Jiangsu with his maternal roots from Zhejiang), his family returned to Nanjing with him following the aftermath of World War II. He has been a French national since 1997. In 1992 he was awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.

Early years in Jiangxi and Jiangsu
Gao's father was a clerk in the Bank of China, and his mother was a member of YMCA. His mother was once a playactress of Anti-Japanese Theatre during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Under his mother's influence, Gao enjoyed painting, writing and theatre very much when he was a little boy. During his middle school years, he read much translated literature from the West, and he studied sketching, ink and wash painting, oil painting and clay sculpture under the guidance of painter Yun Zongying.

In 1950, his family moved to Nanjing. In 1952, Gao entered the Nanjing Number 10 Middle School (later renamed Jinling High School) which was the Middle School attached to Nanjing University.

Years in Beijing and Anhui
In 1957 Gao graduated, and, following his mother's advice, chose Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) instead of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, although he was thought to be talented in art.

In 1962 Gao graduated from the Department of French, BFSU, and then he worked for the Chinese International Bookstore (中國國際書店). During the 1970s, because of the Down to the Countryside Movement, he was persecuted as a public intellectual, forced to destroy his early writings, and was sent to the countryside to do hard labor in Anhui Province for six years. He taught as a Chinese teacher in Gangkou Middle School, Ningguo county, Anhui Province for a short time. In 1975, he was allowed to go back to Beijing and became the group leader of French translation for the magazine China Reconstructs (《中國建設》).

In 1977 Gao worked for the Committee of Foreign Relationship, Chinese Association of Writers. In May 1979, he visited Paris with a group of Chinese writers including Ba Jin. In 1980, Gao became a screenwriter and playwright for the Beijing People's Art Theatre.

Gao is known as a pioneer of absurdist drama in China, where Signal Alarm (《絕對信號》, 1982) and Bus Stop (《車站》, 1983) were produced during his term as resident playwright at the Beijing People's Art Theatre from 1981 to 1987. Influenced by European theatrical models, it gained him a reputation as an avant-garde writer. The production of the former work (the title of which has also been translated as Absolute Signal) was considered a breakthrough and trend-setter in Chinese experimental theatre. His book Preliminary Explorations Into the Art of Modern Fiction was published in September 1981 and reprinted in 1982, by which point several established writers had applauded it. His plays Wild Man (1985) and The Other Shore (《彼岸》, 1986) openly criticised the government's state policies. The rehearsal of the latter was ordered to stop after one month.

In 1986 Gao was misdiagnosed with lung cancer, and he began a 10-month trek along the Yangtze, which resulted in his novel Soul Mountain (《靈山》). The part-memoir, part-novel, first published in Taipei in 1990 and in English in 2000 by HarperCollins Australia, mixes literary genres and utilizes shifting narrative voices. It has been specially cited by the Swedish Nobel committee as "one of those singular literary creations that seem impossible to compare with anything but themselves." The book details his travels from Sichuan province to the coast, and life among Chinese minorities such as the Qiang, Miao, and Yi peoples on the fringes of Han Chinese civilization.

Years in Europe and Paris
By the late 1980s, Gao had shifted to Bagnolet, a city adjacent to Paris, France. His 1989 political drama Fugitives  (also translated as Exile), about three people who escape to a disused warehouse after the tanks roll into Tiananmen Square on 4 June 1989, resulted in all his works being banned from performance in China and he was officially deemed persona non grata.

Works
Selected works:

Dramas and performances

 * 《絕對信號》 (Signal Alarm / Absolute Signal, 1982)
 * 1982, in Beijing People's Art Theatre
 * 1992, in Taiwan
 * 《車站》 (Bus Stop, 1983)
 * 1983, in Beijing People's Art Theatre
 * 1984, in Yugoslavia
 * 1986, in Hong Kong
 * 1986, in Britain, University of Leeds, England. Translated and Directed by Carla Kirkwood
 * 1991, in United States (California) Southwestern College, Chula Vista. Translated and Directed by Carla Kirkwood.
 * 1992, in Austria
 * 1997, in United States (Massachusetts) Smith College, Northampton. Translated and Directed by Carla Kirkwood.
 * 1999, in Japan
 * 2004, in United States (California) University of California at San Diego. Translated and Directed by Carla Kirkwood
 * 《野人》 (Wild Men / Wilderness Man, 1985)
 * 1985, in Beijing People's Art Theatre
 * 1988, in Hamburg, Germany
 * 1990, in Hong Kong
 * 《彼岸》 (The Other Shore, 1986)
 * 1986, published in magazine Oct. (《十月》), Beijing
 * 1990, in Taiwan
 * 1994, translated into Swedish by Göran Malmqvist
 * 1995, in The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts
 * 1997, translated into English by Jo Riley as The Other Side
 * 1999, translated into English by Gilbert C. F. Fong
 * 《躲雨》 (Shelter the Rain)
 * 1981, in Sweden
 * 《冥城》 (Dark City)
 * 1988, in Hong Kong
 * 《聲聲慢變奏》 (Transition of Sheng-Sheng-Man)
 * 1989, in United States
 * 《逃亡》 (Fugitives / Exile, 1989)
 * 1990, published in magazine Today (《今天》)
 * 1990, in Sweden
 * 1992, in Germany, Poland
 * 1993, in USA. Translated by Gregory B. Lee in Gregory Lee (ed.), Chinese Writing in Exile, Center for East Asian Studies, University of Chicago, 1993.
 * 1994, in France
 * 1997, in Japan, Africa
 * 《生死界》 (Death Sector / Between Life and Death)
 * 1991, published in magazine Today (《今天》)
 * 1992, in France
 * 1994, in Sydney, Italy
 * 1996, in Poland
 * 1996, in US
 * 《山海經傳》 (A Tale of Shan Hai Jing)
 * 1992, published by Hong Kong Cosmos Books Ltd. (香港天地圖書公司)
 * 2008, published by The Chinese University Press as Of Mountains and Seas: A Tragicomedy of the Gods in Three Acts
 * 《對話與反詰》 (Dialogue & Rhetorical / Dialogue and Rebuttal)
 * 1992, published in magazine Today (《今天》)
 * 1992, in Vienna
 * 1995, 1999, in Paris
 * 《週末四重奏》 (Weekends Quartet / Weekend Quartet)
 * 1999, published by Hong Kong New Century Press (香港新世纪出版社)
 * 《夜游神》 (Nighthawk / Nocturnal Wanderer)
 * 1999, in France
 * 《八月雪》 (Snow in August)
 * 2000, published by Taiwan Lianjing Press (台湾联经出版社)
 * Dec 19, 2002, in Taipei
 * 《高行健戲劇集》 (Collection)
 * 《高行健喜劇六種》 (Collection, 1995, published by Taiwan Dijiao Press (台湾帝教出版社))
 * 《行路難》 (Xinglunan)
 * 《喀巴拉山》 (Mountain Kebala)
 * 《獨白》 (Soliloquy)

Fiction

 * 《寒夜的星辰》 ("Constellation in a Cold Night", 1979)
 * 《有隻鴿子叫紅唇兒》 ("Such a Pigeon called Red Lips", 1984) – a collection of novellas
 * 《給我老爺買魚竿》 (Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather, 1986–1990) – a short story collection
 * 《靈山》 (Soul Mountain, 1989)
 * 《一個人的聖經》 (One Man's Bible, 1999)

Poetry
While being forced to work as a peasant – a form of 'education' under the Cultural Revolution – in the 1970s, Gao Xingjian produced many plays, short stories, poems and critical pieces that he had to eventually burn to avoid the consequences of his dissident literature being discovered. Of the work he produced subsequently, he published no collections of poetry, being known more widely for his drama, fiction and essays. However, one short poem exists that represents a distinctively modern style akin to his other writings:

 * 天葬臺
 * 宰了 / 割了 / 爛搗碎了 / 燃一柱香 / 打一聲呼哨 / 來了 / 就去了 / 來去都乾乾淨淨

 * Sky Burial
 * Cut / Scalped / Pounded into pieces / Light an incense / Blow the whistle / Come / Gone / Out and out

(April 13, 1986, Beijing)

Other texts

 * 《巴金在巴黎》 (Ba Jin in Paris, 1979, essay)
 * 《現代小說技巧初探》 ("A Preliminary Examination of Modern Fictional Techniques", 1981)
 * 《談小說觀和小說技巧》 (1983)
 * 《沒有主義》 (Without -isms, translated by W. Lau, D. Sauviat & M. Williams // Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia. Vols 27 & 28, 1995–96
 * 《對一種現代戲劇的追求》 (1988, published by China Drama Press) (中国戏剧出版社))
 * 《高行健·2000年文庫——當代中國文庫精讀》 (1999, published by Hong Kong Mingpao Press) (香港明报出版社)

Paintings
Gao is a painter, known especially for his ink and wash painting. His exhibitions have included:
 * Le goût de l'encre, Paris, Hazan 2002
 * Return to Painting, New York, Perennial 2002
 * "無我之境·有我之境", Singapore, Nov 17, 2005 – Feb 7, 2006
 * The End of the World, Germany, Mar 29, – May 27, 2007
 * Calling for A New Renaissance, Taiwan, 2016
 * Solitude 幽居 - A Solo Exhibition by Gao Xingjian, iPreciation, Singapore, 2021

Works translated into English

 * Bus Stop (Che zhan):
 * Translated by Kirkwood, Carla. "Bus Stop". Modern International Drama Journal. SUNY Binghamton. Spring 1995.
 * Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather, short stories, trans. Mabel Lee, Flamingo, London, 2004, ISBN 0-00-717038-6
 * Gao Xingjian: Aesthetics and Creation (2012), essays, trans. Mabel Lee. Cambria Press. ISBN 978-160-49-7836-0
 * One Man's Bible, novel, trans. Mabel Lee. Flamingo. ISBN 0-06-621132-8
 * The Other Shore (Bi'an):
 * Ballade Nocturne by Gao Xingjian. Translated by Claire Conceison. The Cahiers Series. Lewes, UK: Sylph Editions and the American University of Paris, 2010.
 * Silhouette/Shadow: The Cinematic Art of Gao Xingjian, film/images/poetry, ed. Fiona Sze-Lorrain. Contours, Paris, ISBN 978-981-05-9207-3
 * Soul Mountain, novel, trans. Mabel Lee, Flamingo, London, 2001, ISBN 0-00-711923-2
 * Wild Man. Translated by Roubicek, Bruno. Asian Theatre Journal. University of Hawaii Press. 7 (2): 184–249. Autumn 1990.
 * Calling for a New Renaissance, ed. by Mabel Lee, trans. Mabel Lee and Yan Qian, Cambria Press, 2022. ISBN 978-1621966548 - includes 50 images, of which 45 are paintings selected by Gao Xingjian from his private collection.
 * Silhouette/Shadow: The Cinematic Art of Gao Xingjian, film/images/poetry, ed. Fiona Sze-Lorrain. Contours, Paris, ISBN 978-981-05-9207-3
 * Soul Mountain, novel, trans. Mabel Lee, Flamingo, London, 2001, ISBN 0-00-711923-2
 * Wild Man. Translated by Roubicek, Bruno. Asian Theatre Journal. University of Hawaii Press. 7 (2): 184–249. Autumn 1990.
 * Calling for a New Renaissance, ed. by Mabel Lee, trans. Mabel Lee and Yan Qian, Cambria Press, 2022. ISBN 978-1621966548 - includes 50 images, of which 45 are paintings selected by Gao Xingjian from his private collection.

In the Eastern Hemisphere
Gao first saw success and gained critical recognition with the publication of his novella Hanye de xingchen 《寒夜的星辰》 (1980; "Stars on a Cold Night"). When the Chinese Writers' Association launched two mass meetings to attack Preliminary Explorations Into the Art of Modern Fiction, a work which caused national controversy, well-known writers came forward to speak in defense of it. Australian sinologist Geremie Barmé stated in 1983 that the work gave some coherence to Chinese writers' attempts to understand Western art and literature after World War I, but "reads more like a loose collection of jottings and reflections [...] the only reason that it has become the Bible of Chinese modernists is that there is an absolute paucity of similar material for a non-specialist readership."

He became a resident playwright with the Beijing People's Art Theatre in 1981, and in 1982 he wrote his first play, Absolute Signal. A committee appointed by the Ministry of Culture unanimously voted Absolute Signal the best play in a compilation of recent plays, though the playwright was by then a controversial figure and it was excluded from above as "ineligible for selection". His absurdist drama Chezhan (1983; Bus Stop) incorporated various European techniques from European Theater. While Cao Yu praised Bus Stop as "wonderful", it was openly condemned by Communist Party officials. He left Beijing and went into self-exile, returning in November 1984. His 1985 play Yeren (Wild Man) was favorably received, and according to scholar Gilbert C. F. Fong represented "the pinnacle of the development of experimental drama at the time. It also gave notice that drama [...] did not have to be guided by the concerns for socialist education or political usefulness, and that interpretive lacunae in any piece of work [...] would enhance artistic effectiveness."

Both Western and Chinese critics described The Bus Stop as the first play to introduce elements of the Theatre of the Absurd to China, while Wild Man was considered to be influenced by Chinese theatrical traditions and praised more for its effort to improve the range of expression open to Chinese performing artists. Absolute Signal, Bus Stop, and Wild Man have been described as "both the origin and culmination of the initial phase of the Chinese avant-garde". In 1986 his play The Other Shore was banned, and since then none of his other plays have been performed on the mainland.

Response from Zhu Rongji
Premier Zhu Rongji of the State Council of the People's Republic of China delivered a congratulatory message to Gao Xingjian when interviewed by the Hong Kong newspaper East Daily (《东方日报》):

 * Q.: What's your comment on Gao's winning Nobel Prize ?
 * A.: I am very happy that works written in Chinese can win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Chinese characters have a history of several thousand years, and Chinese language has an infinite charm, (I) believe that there will be Chinese works winning Nobel Prizes again in the future. Although it's a pity that the winner this time is a French citizen instead of a Chinese citizen, I still would like to send my congratulations both to the winner and the French Ministry of Culture. (Original words: 我很高兴用汉语写作的文学作品获诺贝尔文学奖. 汉字有几千年的历史，汉语有无穷的魅力，相信今后还会有汉语或华语作品获奖. 很遗憾这次获奖的是法国人不是中国人，但我还是要向获奖者和法国文化部表示祝贺. )

Comments from Chinese writers
Gao's work has led to fierce discussion among Chinese writers, both positive and negative.

In his article on Gao in the June 2008 issue of Muse, a now-defunct Hong Kong magazine, Leo Ou-fan Lee praises the use of Chinese language in Soul Mountain: 'Whether it works or not, it is a rich fictional language filled with vernacular speeches and elegant 文言 (classical) formulations as well as dialects, thus constituting a "heteroglossic" tapestry of sounds and rhythms that can indeed be read aloud (as Gao himself has done in his public readings).'

Before 2000, a dozen Chinese writers and scholars already predicted Gao's winning the Nobel Prize for Literature, including Hu Yaoheng (Chinese: 胡耀恒) Pan Jun (潘军) as early as 1999.

Jessica Yeung of Hong Kong Baptist University praised the story "Twenty-Five Years Later" (1982), writing that the manipulation of narrative perspectives creates effective humor and irony.

In the western world
Gilbert C. F. Fong has called Preliminary Explorations Into the Art of Modern Fiction "a rather crude attempt at theory". His plays Absolute Signal, Bus Stop, and Wild Man gave him a positive reputation overseas. A review in The Christian Science Monitor praised Wild Man as "truly amazing". Deirdre Sabina Knight of Smith College praised Gao's "inventiveness" in a review of Fong's translations of five of the plays. Each play is followed by notes written by Gao, and John B. Weinstein of Simon's Rock College of Bard argues that these notes "combine the practical with the theoretical. As a group, they embody a significant body of dramatic theory." Weinstein said that "tripartition allows Gao to probe his characters more deeply by presenting multiple perspectives for each one", and that Weekend Quartet (in which characters' self-analyses are integrated with more realistic settings and everyday situations than those of the other plays Fong translated) is a step toward Gao's theories being applied to plays besides his own. The primary translators of Gao's work into English are Mabel Lee (novels and essays from Chinese to English), Gilbert Fong (plays and poetry from Chinese to English), Noel Dutrait (novels and essays from French to English), and Claire Conceison (plays from French to English). English-language scholars who have written books about Gao's work include Sy Ren Quah, Letizia Fusini, Todd Coulter, Izabella Labedzka, and Mary Mazzilli.

Influence of Gao's work in other fields
The work of Gao Xingjian inspired professor Jin Hsu-ren from the Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling at National Taiwan Normal University to create a psychological therapy called "Psychological Displacement Paradigm in Diary-writing" (PDPD) based on the way Soul Mountain was written, using the three pronoun positions of "I", "you" and "he/she".

Honors

 * 1985, DAAD Fellowship, Germany
 * 1989, Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, United States
 * 1992, Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
 * 2000, Nobel Prize in Literature
 * 2000, Premio Letterario Feronia in Rome
 * 2001, honorary doctorate by Chinese University of Hong Kong
 * 2001, honorary doctorate by National Sun Yat-sen University
 * 2002, honorary doctorate by National Chiao Tung University
 * 2002, Legion of Honour by then French President Jacques Chirac
 * 2002, Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement
 * 2003, l'Anne Gao Xingjian, the City of Marseille
 * 2005, honorary doctorate by National Taiwan University
 * 2006, Lions Award, by the New York Public Library (NYPL) at Library Lions Benefit event
 * 2017, honorary doctorate by National Taiwan Normal University
 * 2023, elected as a Royal Society of Literature International Writer

Gao Xingjian Center at National Taiwan Normal University
For a long time Gao Xingjian has considered Taiwan his home and has a deep connection with National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). In 2008, he accepted President Gou Yih-shun's invitation to become an honorary chair professor at the university. In 2011, President Chang Kuo-En traveled to France to extend an invitation, resulting in Mr. Gao becoming a chair professor at the Graduate Institute of Performing Arts in 2012, where he has been teaching courses for several years. His exceptional accomplishments and remarkable contributions to society led him being awarded an honorary doctorate in literature from NTNU in 2017.

Since 2012, NTNU has collaborated closely with Professor Gao to organize a series of events and performances. For instance, in 2012, the university arranged the "Encounter Gao Xingjian at NTNU - Commemorating the Visit of Nobel Laureate in Literature Gao Xingjian." In 2014, NTNU, in conjunction with the National Palace Museum, co-presented the Taiwanese premiere of the cinematic poem "Requiem for Beauty," alongside the publication of the corresponding art book. Furthermore, Professor Gao himself donated and unveiled the Xingjian Hall, a rehearsal room for the Graduate Institute of Performing Arts. The years following saw additional significant events, including the "Gao Xingjian Art Festival" in 2017, where his ink wash painting "The Thinker" was presented, and the "Gao Xingjian Week" in 2019, which introduced courses such as "The Literature and Art of Gao Xingjian" and "Studies on Plays of Gao Xingjian", curses currently offered by NTNU each semester. Meanwhile, the Graduate Institute of Performing Arts performed several of his iconic works, including the Mandarin debut of "Nocturnal Wanderer" (2012), the vibrant rock-and-roll musical "Mountains and Seas" (2013, 2017), the dance theater production "Soul Mountain" (2016, 2017), the monologue "Soliloquy" (2019), and the university repertory production "Soliloquy on Soul Mountain" (2019).

In 2020, Professor Gao celebrated his 10th year as an NTNU chair professor, commemorating this milestone by generously donating various manuscripts and pertinent books to the university. As a testament to the academic bond with Professor Gao and to foster research on his works, NTNU established the Gao Xingjian Center on the sixth floor of the NTNU Library. This center serves as a repository for his writings, documents, and relevant research materials. Leveraging its strengths and distinct characteristics in the realm of arts and humanities, as well as interdisciplinary collaboration across the College of Liberal Arts, College of Arts, and College of Music, NTNU aspires to emerge as a pivotal research hub for Gao Xingjian's works within the Chinese-speaking world.

Trivia

 * Gao is the second of the three laureates to give Nobel lecture in Chinese (the other two are Samuel C. C. Ting in 1976 and Mo Yan in 2012).
 * Gao is an atheist.

title: Gao Xingjian