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Doxology

A doxology (Ancient Greek: δοξολογία doxologia, from δόξα, doxa 'glory' and -λογία, -logia 'saying')  is a short hymn of praises to God in various forms of Christian worship, often added to the end of canticles, psalms, and hymns. The tradition derives from a similar practice in the Jewish synagogue, where some version of the Kaddish serves to terminate each section of the service.

Trinitarian doxology
Among Christian traditions a doxology is typically an expression of praise sung to the Holy Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is common in high hymns for the final stanza to take the form of a doxology. Doxologies occur in the Eucharistic prayers, the Liturgy of the Hours, hymns, and various Catholic devotions such as novenas and the Rosary.

Gloria in excelsis Deo
The Gloria in excelsis Deo, also called the Greater Doxology, is a hymn beginning with the words that the angels sang when the birth of Christ was announced to shepherds in. Other verses were added forming a doxology.

Gloria Patri
The Gloria Patri, so named for its Latin incipit, is commonly used as a doxology in many Christian traditions, including the Roman Catholics, Old Catholics, Independent Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Disciples of Christ, Reformed Baptists and United Protestants. It is called the "Lesser Doxology", thus distinguished from the "Great Doxology" (Gloria in Excelsis Deo), and is often called simply "the doxology". As well as praising God, it was regarded as a short declaration of faith in the equality of the three Persons of the Holy Trinity.

The Greek text,
 * Δόξα Πατρὶ καὶ Υἱῷ καὶ Ἁγίῳ Πνεύματι
 * καὶ νῦν καὶ ἀεὶ καὶ εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων. Ἀμήν.

is rendered into Latin as,

 * Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

which is literally translated

 * Glory [be] to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.
 * As it was in the beginning, and now, and always, and into the ages of ages. Amen.

"In saecula saeculorum", here rendered "ages of ages", is the calque of what was probably a Semitic idiom, via Koine Greek, meaning "forever." It is also rendered "world without end" in English, an expression also used in James I's Authorised Version of the Bible in Ephesians 3:21 and Isaiah 45:17. Similarly, "et semper" is often rendered "and ever shall be", thus giving the more metrical English version,

 * ... As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

A common version of the Liturgy of the Hours, as approved by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, uses a newer, different translation for the Latin:

 * Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.

The most commonly encountered Orthodox English version:

 * Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, both now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen

The modern Anglican version found in Common Worship is slightly different, and is rooted in the aforementioned translations found in the Authorised Version:

 * Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

"Praise God, from whom all blessings flow"

Another doxology in widespread use in English, in some Protestant traditions commonly referred to simply as The Doxology or The Common Doxology, begins "Praise God, from whom all blessings flow". The words are thus:

 * Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
 * Praise Him, all creatures here below;
 * Praise Him above, ye heavenly host;
 * Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

These words were written in 1674 by Thomas Ken as the final verse of two hymns, "Awake, my soul, and with the sun" and "Glory to thee, my God, this night," intended for morning and evening worship at Winchester College. This final verse, separated from its proper hymns and sung to the tune "Old 100th", "Duke Street", "Lasst uns erfreuen", "The Eighth Tune" by Thomas Tallis, among others, frequently marks the dedication of alms or offerings at Sunday worship. The popular Hawaiian version Hoʻonani i ka Makua mau was translated by Hiram Bingham I and is published in hymnals. Many Mennonite congregations sing a longer and more embellished setting of this text known as "Dedication Anthem" by Samuel Stanley. In Mennonite circles, this doxology is commonly known as "606" for its hymn number in The Mennonite Hymnal [1969], and colloquially known as the "Mennonite National Anthem." The traditional version of the Doxology is recited in most congregations of the Methodist Churches, such as the Free Methodist Church and Global Methodist Church. Students at Goshen College stand and sing the doxology when 6:06 remains in a soccer game – as long as Goshen is winning the game.

Some progressive denominations have adopted altered versions of the Doxology in the interest of inclusive language or other considerations. For example, some Disciples of Christ congregations eliminate the masculine pronouns. Some denominations, such as the Anglican Church of Canada (Common Praise), the United Church of Canada (Voices United), and the United Church of Christ (New Century Hymnal), replace "heavenly host" with a reference to God's love. The United Church of Christ version reads:

 * Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
 * Praise God, all creatures here below;
 * Praise God for all that love has done;
 * Creator, Christ, and Spirit, One.

The Presbyterian Church (USA) accepted this version of the Doxology in 2014 to accompany the Glory to God, the Presbyterian Hymnal. This version was written by the Rev. Neil Weatherhogg, pastor of both the First Presbyterian Church of Kerrville, Texas, and the Harvey Browne Presbyterian Church in Louisville, Kentucky. This version was published by Rev. Weatherhogg in 1990. This hymn maintains Gender neutrality as it does not refer to God in gender specific terminology. It goes:

 * Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
 * Praise God, all creatures here below;
 * Praise God above ye heavenly host;
 * Praise Triune God, whom we adore

Other versions of this doxology exist as well, with various lyrics, including in the United Methodist Hymnal (#621), (preserving the text change of thy creatures as opposed to the original these creature ) Be Present at Our Table, Lord," which is often sung as grace before meals using the tune "Old 100th;" hymn by John Cennick; tune from the Genevan Psalter, 1551; attributed to Louis Bourgeois:

 * Be present at our table, Lord;
 * be here and everywhere adored;
 * thy creatures bless, and grant that we
 * may feast in paradise with thee.

Eucharistic doxology
In the Catholic Mass a prose doxology concludes the eucharistic prayer, preceding the Our Father. It is typically sung by the presiding priest along with any concelebrating priests. The Latin text reads:

 * Per ipsum, et cum ipso, et in ipso, est tibi Deo Patri omnipotenti in unitate Spiritus Sancti, omnis honor et gloria per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen. (1. Through him, with him, in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours almighty Father, forever and ever Amen. and 2. Through him, and with him, and in him, O God, almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, forever and ever. Amen.)

The equivalent passage in the Book of Common Prayer (1549) of the Church of England reads:

 * By whom and with whom, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honour and glory be unto thee, O Father almighty, world without end. Amen.

Lord's Prayer doxology
Another familiar doxology is the one often added at the end of the Lord's Prayer: "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever, Amen." This is found in manuscripts representative of the Byzantine text of Matthew 6:13, but not in the manuscripts considered by Catholics to be the most reliable. According to Scrivener's "Supplement to the Authorized English version of New Testament", it is omitted by eight out of 500 or so manuscripts. Some scholars do not consider it part of the original text of Matthew, and modern translations do not include it, mentioning it only in footnotes. Since 1970, the doxology, in the form "For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and for ever", is used in the Roman Rite of the Mass, after the Embolism. The Catholic Encyclopedia (1914) claims that this doxology "appears in the Greek textus receptus and has been adopted in the later editions of the Book of Common Prayer, [and] is undoubtedly an interpolation." In fact, the Lord's Prayer doxology is often left away by Catholics, such as in the Liturgy of the Hours, or when, which is quite often outside Mass, a Hail Mary follows immediately (e. g. in the Rosary where the Gloria Patri serves as doxology).

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, this doxology takes up "the first three petitions to our Father: the glorification of his name, the coming of his reign, and the power of his saving will. But these prayers are now proclaimed as adoration and thanksgiving, as in the liturgy of heaven. The ruler of this world has mendaciously attributed to himself the three titles of kingship, power, and glory. Christ, the Lord, restores them to his Father and our Father, until he hands over the kingdom to him when the mystery of salvation will be brought to its completion and God will be all in all."

Other doxologies
In the Epistle of Jude, the last two verses (24 and 25) are considered to be a doxology and are used by many Protestant Christians, especially in public worship settings:
 * "Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen." (KJV)

At Matins, Orthodox worship specifies a Great Doxology for feast days and a Small Doxology for ordinary days. Both include the Gospel doxology of the angels at Christ's birth (Luke 2:14: "Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will"). The lines of this doxology are the opening lines of the prayer Gloria in Excelsis recited during the Roman Catholic Mass.

Pentecostal
A popular doxology in African-American Pentecostal and Baptist churches is "Praise Him, Praise Him", written in the 1980s by famed African American Gospel singer and minister Reverend Milton Biggham.

Praise him, praise him, praise him, praise him! Jesus, blessed Savior, he's worthy to be praised.

From the rising of the sun until the going down of the same, he's worthy, Jesus is worthy, he's worthy to be praised.

Glory! Glory! In all things give him glory. Jesus, blessed Savior, he's worthy to be praised.

For God is our rock, hope of salvation; a strong deliverer, in him I will always trust.

Praise him, praise him, praise him, praise him! Jesus, blessed Savior, he's worthy to be praised.

From the rising of the sun until the going down of the same, he's worthy, Jesus is worthy, he's worthy to be praised.

Praise him, praise him, praise him, praise him! Jesus, blessed Savior, he's worthy to be praised.

Iglesia ni Cristo
In the Iglesia ni Cristo, the Doxology is sung before the Benediction and Concluding Rites during worship services. It reads:

! Tagalog !! Official English Text
 * "Purihin natin ang Amá; || "Praise God, our Father up above;
 * Mabuhay sa pag-ibig ng Anák; || Proclaim the love of His beloved Son;
 * Taglayín ang Espíritung Banál; || Receive the Holy Spirit's gift;
 * Ang Dios ay lagì nating sambahín. || Forever worship our Almighty God.
 * Amen" || Amen"
 * }
 * Ang Dios ay lagì nating sambahín. || Forever worship our Almighty God.
 * Amen" || Amen"
 * }
 * Amen" || Amen"
 * }

Unitarian Universalism
In Unitarian Universalism, "the Doxology" typically refers to Curtis W. Reese's adaptation of "From all that dwell below the skies", an 18th-century paraphrase of Psalm 117 by Isaac Watts:
 * "From all that dwell below the skies
 * let songs of hope and faith arise; (Or, alternatively, let faith and hope with love arise)
 * let peace, goodwill on earth be sung (Or let beauty, truth and good be sung)
 * through every land, by every tongue." (Or in every land, in every tongue.)

While many congregations who use a doxology use these words and sing them to the tune of Old 100th, there are nine different lyrics that congregations may choose to use, along with three tunes (Old 100th, Tallis' Canon, and Von Himmel Hoch) listed in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal Singing the Living Tradition.

These doxologies appear in Unitarian Universalist services as short songs of communal praise and connection, placed in the service much as Trinitarian doxologies are placed in a Protestant Christian service.

Derivations
Because some Christian worship services include a doxology, and these hymns therefore were familiar and well-practiced among church choirs, the English word sockdolager arose, a deformation of doxology, which came to mean a "show-stopper", a production number. The Oxford English Dictionary considers it a "fanciful" coinage, but an 1893 speculation reported in the Chicago Tribune as to the origin of the word as one of its early attestations:

 * A writer in the March Atlantic gives this as the origin of the slang word "socdollager", which was current some time ago. "Socdollager" was the uneducated man's transposition of "doxologer", which was the familiar New England rendering of "doxology". This was the Puritan term for the verse ascription used at the conclusion of every hymn, like the "Gloria" at the end of a chanted psalm. On doctrinal grounds it was proper for the whole congregation to join in the singing, so that it became a triumphant winding up of the whole act of worship. Thus is happened that "socdollager" became the term for anything which left nothing else to follow; a decisive, overwhelming finish, to which no reply was possible.

title: Doxology


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Futabatei Shimei

Futabatei Shimei (二葉亭 四迷) was a Japanese writer, translator, and literary critic. His writings are in the realist style popular in the mid to late 19th century. His work The Drifting Cloud (Ukigumo, 1887) is widely regarded as Japan's first modern novel.

Biography
Futabatei was born Hasegawa Tatsunosuke in Edo (now Tokyo). After quitting his studies at the Russian language department at the Tokyo Foreign Language School in protest over administrative restructuring, Futabatei published the literary criticism Shōsetsu Sōron at the encouragement of the critic and author Tsubouchi Shōyō in 1886. Futabatei's first novel Ukigumo is often said to be unfinished, but its realist style strongly influenced fellow authors in his day. Futabatei was accomplished in Russian and translated the work of Ivan Turgenev and other Russian realists into Japanese.

In 1902, he learned Esperanto in Russia. Returning to Japan in 1906, he published the first Japanese-Esperanto instruction book Sekaigo.

Futabatei died of tuberculosis on the Bay of Bengal while returning from Russia as a special correspondent for the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. He was cremated and buried in Singapore.

The origin of Futabatei's pen name (a reference to "kutabatte shimae", lit. "drop dead") has been the repeated subject of speculation (including the allegation that these had been his father's words when he learned of his son's plans to study literature). Futabatei claimed that these were the words of his inner voice while in conflict between his artistic ideals and monetary aspirations.

Novels

 * 1887: Ukigumo (浮雲)
 * 1906: An Adopted Husband (其面影, Sono Omokage)
 * 1907: Heibon (平凡)

Essays

 * 1885: Bijutsu no hongi
 * 1886: Shōsetsu Sōron (小説総論)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Futabatei Shimei


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Kensaku Shimaki

Kensaku Shimaki (島木 健作) was the pen-name of Asakura Kikuo (朝倉 菊雄), a Japanese author active during the Shōwa period in Japan. He had an interest in leftist ideology and was arrested in 1928 due to his ties to the Japanese Communist Party. Throughout his literary career, Shimaki wrote multiple novels and stories with a common theme being proletariat life. Some of his works were published by magazines and journals. He associated with Nobel laureate Kawabata Yasunari.

Early life
Shimaki was born in Sapporo, Hokkaidō in 1903. His father died when he was two years old, and he was raised by his mother. He was forced to drop out of elementary school in order to work to support his mother, and managed to continue his education by obtaining odd jobs at a local middle school and library.

Life as a political radical
Shimaki entered Tohoku Imperial University in Sendai in 1925, but due to extreme poverty was barely able to support himself, and he contracted pulmonary tuberculosis. It was during this time that he was attracted to the radical labor movement. He left the university and joined a leftist agrarian movement in Shikoku. In 1927, this flirtation with socialism turned more radical when he signed on as active member of the Japan Communist Party.

When the communist movement was outlawed and forced underground, Shimaki was arrested in a nationwide round-up of communists (the March 15 incident of 1928), and was forced to renounce his communist beliefs in order to be released from prison. However, it appears that his political renunciation was not sincere, since he was again arrested in 1929, this time under the auspices of the Peace Preservation Law. Shimaki remained imprisoned until March 1932, when his tuberculosis worsened, and he was paroled for health reasons. He stayed for a while in the Hongō neighborhood of Tokyo with his brother (who ran a used bookstore) and he attempted to study English.

Literary career
Although in his youth, Shimaki published a short-lived literary magazine called Kunugi no Mi ("Acorn", 1918), containing tanka poems and essays which he wrote under the pen-name of “Asakura Tengai”, his literary career did not begin in earnest until after he was released from prison the second time.

In 1934, Shimaki published his first work Rai ("Leprosy"), a serialized novel which appeared in the magazine Bungaku Hyōron (Literary Review). It was based on his experiences while in prison, and was critically well received. Shimaki followed this work with Mōmoku ("Blindness") in the literary journal Chūōkōron, which further established his position as a writer.

Shimaki lived in Kamakura, Kanagawa prefecture from 1937, and was part of a social and literary circle which included Kawabata Yasunari, Kobayashi Hideo and Takami Jun. However, his first novel, Saiken ("Reconstruction", 1937) was banned by government censors as it sympathetically depicted a man convicted for his left-wing convictions. Shimaki had intended to write a sequel, in which the man rejected Marxism, but never had the chance. Instead, he produced Seikatsu no tankyū ("Quest for Life", 1937), which was well received by the authorities, as it depicted people having a productive life despite difficult conditions during a national emergency.

He traveled to Manchukuo in 1939, and published a well-balanced travel story Manshū Kiko ("Manchurian Travelogue", 1939) of his visit, and somewhat surprisingly government censors did not react to his criticism of government policies in Manchukuo which adversely affected the lives of the Japanese colonists. Shimaki died of tuberculosis in 1945, only a couple of days after the surrender of Japan at the relatively young age of 41. Yasunari Kawabata read a eulogy at his funeral. His grave is at the temple of Jōchi-ji in Kamakura.

title: Kensaku Shimaki


text:
Shizu Shiraki

Shizu Shiraki (素木 しづ) was a Japanese author. She contracted tuberculosis after middle school and had her leg amputated at age 17, after which she took fiction writing lessons from Morita Sōhei, started writing, and wrote throughout the six years until her death. According to scholar Barbara Hartley, Shiraki's willingness to write about body-related issues, such as menstruation, "marks her as singularly incisive and even subversive."

title: Shizu Shiraki


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Jūkichi Yagi

Jūkichi Yagi (八木 重吉) was a Japanese poet active in the late Taishō period and for the first few years of the Shōwa period, who focused on modern religious themes.

Biography
Born in what is now part of the city of Machida near Tokyo, Yagi attended the Kanagawa Prefectural Normal School, then located in Kamakura, Kanagawa prefecture. There he converted to Methodism and became attracted to the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore. In 1919, Yagi was baptized at the Komagome Christian Church in Tokyo. He remained a devout Protestant all his short life, but later moved to the Non-Church Christianity (Mukyōkai) as advocated by Uchimura Kanzō.

After graduation, Yagi taught at the Mikage Normal School in Hyōgo Prefecture, and began to write verse as an expression of his faith. He was very much inspired by the poems of John Keats, to whom he dedicated a number of his poems. Yagi published his first collection, Aki no Hitome (Autumn Eye) in 1925. Although he contributed several pieces to poetry magazines, he remained shy of literary circles.

Hospitalized with tuberculosis in Chigasaki, Kanagawa in 1926, he died on 26 October 1927. Only after his death and the publication of Mazushiki Shinto (Humble Believer), Yagi Jukichi Shishu (Yagi Jukichi Anthology), and Kami O Yobu (Talk to God) did he gain widespread recognition.

title: Jūkichi Yagi


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Kaita Murayama

Kaita Murayama (村山 槐多) was a Japanese writer and artist. One of his self-portraits appears in the Mie Prefectural Art Museum in Tsu Mie Prefecture, Japan (not pictured here). He trained at the Fine Arts Academy in Tokyo and was influenced by Western art styles. His work is described as being muscular and robust.

title: Kaita Murayama


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Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (芥川 龍之介), art name Chōkōdō Shujin (澄江堂主人), was a Japanese writer active in the Taishō period in Japan. He is regarded as the "father of the Japanese short story", and Japan's premier literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, is named after him. He took his own life at the age of 35 through an overdose of barbital.

Early life
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa was born in Irifune, Kyōbashi, Tokyo City (present-day Akashi, Chūō, Tokyo), the eldest son of businessman Toshizō Niihara and his wife Fuku. His family owned a milk production business. His mother experienced mental illness shortly after his birth, so he was adopted and raised by his maternal uncle, Dōshō Akutagawa, from whom he received the Akutagawa family name. He was interested in classical Chinese literature from an early age, as well as in the works of Mori Ōgai and Natsume Sōseki.

He entered the First High School in 1910 and developed relationships with classmates such as Kan Kikuchi, Kume Masao, Yūzō Yamamoto, and Tsuchiya Bunmei, all of whom would later become authors. He began writing after entering Tokyo Imperial University (now the University of Tokyo) in 1913, where he studied English literature. While still a student, he proposed marriage to a childhood friend, Yayoi Yoshida, but his adoptive family did not approve the union. In 1916 he became engaged to Fumi Tsukamoto, whom he married in 1918. They had three children: Hiroshi Akutagawa (1920–1981) was an actor, Takashi Akutagawa (1922–1945) was killed as a student draftee in Burma, and Yasushi Akutagawa (1925–1989) was a composer.

Following graduation, Akutagawa taught briefly at the Naval Engineering School in Yokosuka, Kanagawa as an English language instructor, before deciding to devote his efforts to writing fulltime.

Literary career

In 1914, Akutagawa and his former high school friends revived the literary journal Shinshichō ("New Currents of Thought"), where they published translations of William Butler Yeats and Anatole France along with works they had written themselves. Akutagawa published his second short story "Rashōmon" the following year in the literary magazine Teikoku Bungaku ("Imperial Literature"), while still a student. The story, based on a twelfth-century tale, was not well received by Akutagawa's friends, who greatly criticized it. Nonetheless, Akutagawa gathered up the courage to visit his idol, Natsume Sōseki, in December 1915 for Sōseki's weekly literary circles. In November, he published the work in the literary magazine Teikoku Mongaku. In early 1916 he published "Hana" ("The Nose", 1916), which received a letter of praise from Sōseki and secured Akutagawa his first taste of fame.

It was also at this time that Akutagawa started writing haiku under the haigo (pen name) Gaki. Akutagawa followed with a series of short stories set in Heian period, Edo period or early Meiji period Japan. These stories reinterpreted classical works and historical incidents. Examples of these stories include: Gesaku zanmai ("Absorbed in Letters", 1917) and Kareno-shō ("Gleanings from a Withered Field", 1918), Jigoku hen ("Hell Screen", 1918); Hōkyōnin no shi ("The Death of a Christian", 1918), and Butōkai ("The Ball", 1920). Akutagawa was a strong opponent of naturalism. He published Mikan ("Mandarin Oranges", 1919) and Aki ("Autumn", 1920) which have more modern settings.

In 1921, Akutagawa interrupted his writing career to spend four months in China, as a reporter for the Osaka Mainichi Shinbun. The trip was stressful and he suffered from various illnesses, from which his health would never recover. Shortly after his return he published Yabu no naka ("In a Grove", 1922). During the trip, Akutagawa visited numerous cities of southeastern China including Nanjing, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Suzhou. Before his travel, he wrote a short story "The Christ of Nanjing(short story)"; concerning the Chinese Christian community; according to his own imaginative vision of Nanjing, as influenced by classical Chinese literature.

Influences
Akutagawa's stories were influenced by his belief that the practice of literature should be universal and could bring together Western and Japanese cultures. The idea can be seen in the way that Akutagawa used existing works from a variety of cultures and time periods and either rewrites the story with modern sensibilities or creates new stories using ideas from multiple sources. Culture and the formation of a cultural identity is also a major theme in several of his works. In these stories, he explores the formation of cultural identity during periods in history where Japan was most open to outside influences. An example of this is his story "Hōkyōnin no Shi" ("The Martyr", 1918) which is set in the early missionary period.

The portrayal of women in Akutagawa's stories was mainly shaped by the influence of three women who acted as his mother figures. Most significant was his biological mother Fuku, from whom he worried about inheriting her madness. Although Akutagawa was removed from Fuku eight months after his birth, he identified strongly with her and believed that, if at any moment he might go mad, life was meaningless. His aunt Fuki played the most prominent role in his upbringing, controlling much of Akutagawa's life as well as demanding much of his attention, especially as she grew older. The women who appear in Akutagawa's stories, much like his mother figures, were for the most part written as dominating, aggressive, deceitful, and selfish. Conversely, men were often represented as the victims of such women.

Later life
The final phase of Akutagawa's literary career was marked by deteriorating physical and mental health. Much of his work during this period is distinctly autobiographical, some with text taken directly from his diaries. His works during this period include Daidōji Shinsuke no hansei ("The Early Life of Daidōji Shinsuke", 1925) and Tenkibo ("Death Register", 1926).

At this time, Akutagawa had a highly publicized dispute with Jun'ichirō Tanizaki over the importance of structure versus lyricism in stories. Akutagawa argued that structure (how the story was told) was more important than the content or plot of the story, whereas Tanizaki argued the opposite.

Akutagawa's final works include Kappa (1927), a satire based on the eponymous creature from Japanese folklore, Haguruma ("Spinning Gears" or "Cogwheels", 1927), Aru ahō no isshō ("A Fool's Life" or "The Life of a Stupid Man"), and Bungeiteki na, amari ni bungeiteki na ("Literary, All Too Literary", 1927).

Towards the end of his life, Akutagawa suffered from visual hallucinations and anxiety over the fear that he had inherited his mother's mental disorder. In 1927, he survived a suicide attempt, together with a friend of his wife. He later died of suicide after taking an overdose of Veronal, which had been given to him by Mokichi Saitō on 24 July of the same year. In his will he wrote that he felt a "vague insecurity" (ぼんやりした不安) about the future. He was 35 years old.

Legacy and adaptations
During the course of his short life, Akutagawa wrote 150 short stories. A number of these have been adapted into other media. Akira Kurosawa's famous 1950 film Rashōmon retells Akutagawa's In a Bamboo Grove, with the title and the frame scenes set in the Rashomon Gate taken from Akutagawa's Rashōmon. Ukrainian composer Victoria Poleva wrote the ballet Gagaku (1994), based on Akutagawa's Hell Screen. Japanese composer Mayako Kubo wrote an opera entitled Rashomon, based on Akutagawa's story. The German version premiered in Graz, Austria in 1996, and the Japanese version in Tokyo in 2002. The central conceit of the story (i.e. conflicting accounts of the same events from different points of view, with none "definitive") has entered into storytelling as an accepted trope.

In 1930, Tatsuo Hori, a writer, who saw himself as a disciple of Akutagawa, published his short story "Sei kazoku" (literally "The Holy Family"), which was written under the impression of Akutagawa's death and even paid reference to the dead mentor in the shape of the deceased character Kuki. In 1935, Akutagawa's lifelong friend Kan Kikuchi established the literary award for promising new writers, the Akutagawa Prize, in his honor.

In 2020 NHK produced and aired the film A Stranger in Shanghai. It depicts Akutagawa's time as a reporter in the city and stars Ryuhei Matsuda.

Works in English translation

 * Eminent Authors of Contemporary Japan, Vol. 2. Trans. Eric S. Bell & Eiji Ukai. Tokyo: Kaitakusha, 1930(?).
 * The Spider's Web.--The Autumn.--The Nose.

 * Tales Grotesque and Curious. Trans. Glenn W. Shaw. Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1930.
 * Tobacco and the devil.--The nose.--The handkerchief.--Rashōmon.--Lice.--The spider's thread.--The wine worm.--The badger.--The ball.--The pipe.--Mōri Sensei.

 * Hell Screen and Other Stories. Trans. W.H.H. Norman. Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1948.
 * Jigokuhen.--Jashūmon.--The General.--Mensura Zoilii.

 * Kappa. Trans. Seiichi Shiojiri. Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1951.
 * The Three Treasures. Trans. Sasaki Takamasa. Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1951.
 * The Real Tripitaka and Other Pieces. George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1952.
 * "San Sebastian" translated by Arthur Waley.

 * Rashomon and Other Stories. Trans. Takashi Kojima. Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1952.
 * In a Grove.--Rashomon.--Yam Gruel.--The Martyr.--Kesa and Morito.--The Dragon.
 * Not to be confused with a book of the same title that contains translations by Shaw, published by Hara Shobo in 1964 and reprinted in 1976.

 * Modern Japanese Literature. Grove/Atlantic, 1956.
 * "Kesa and Morito" translated by Howard Hibbett.

 * Modern Japanese Stories: An Anthology. UNESCO, 1961.
 * "Autumn Mountain" translated by Ivan Morris.

 * Posthumous Works of Ryunosuke Akutagawa: His Life, Suicide, & Christ. Trans. Akio Inoue. 1961.
 * A Note Forwarded to a Certain Old Friend.--Life of a Certain Fool.--Western Man.--Western Man Continued.

 * Japanese Short Stories. Trans. Takashi Kojima. New York: Liveright Pub. Corp., 1961.
 * The Hell Screen.--A Clod of Soil.--Nezumi-Kozo.--Heichu, the Amorous Genius.--Genkaku-Sanbo.--Otomi's Virginity.--The Spider's Thread.--The Nose.--The Tangerines.--The Story of Yonosuke.

 * Exotic Japanese stories: The Beautiful and the Grotesque. Trans. Takashi Kojima & John McVittie. New York: Liveright Pub. Corp., 1964.
 * The Robbers.--The Dog, Shiro.--The Handkerchief.--The Dolls.--Gratitude.--The Faith of Wei Shêng.--The Lady, Roku-no-miya.--The Kappa.--Saigô Takamori.--The Greeting.--Withered Fields.--Absorbed in letters.--The Garden.--The Badger.--Heresy (Jashumon).--A Woman's Body.
 * Reissued by Liveright in 2010 as The Beautiful and the Grotesque.

 * Tu Tze-Chun. Trans. Dorothy Britton. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1965.
 * Kappa. Trans. Geoffrey Bownas. London: Peter Owen Publishers, 1970. ISBN 072064870X
 * A Fool's Life. Trans. Will Petersen. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1970. ISBN 0670323500
 * La fille au chapeau rouge. Trans. Lalloz ed. Picquier (1980). in ISBN 978-2-87730-200-5 (French edition)
 * Cogwheels and Other Stories. Trans. Howard Norman. Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic Press, 1982. ISBN 0889621772
 * Cogwheels.--Hell Screen.--The Spider's Thread.

 * The Spider's Thread and Other Stories. Trans. Dorothy Britton. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1987. ISBN 4061860275
 * The Spider's Thread.--The Art of the Occult.--Tu Tze-chun.--The Wagon.--The Tangerines.-- The Nose.-- The Dolls.-- Whitie.

 * Hell screen. Cogwheels. A Fool's Life. Eridanos Press, 1987. ISBN 0941419029
 * Reprints Kojima and Petersen translations; "Cogwheels" translated by Cid Corman and Susumu Kamaike.

 * Akutagawa & Dazai: Instances of Literary Adaptation. Trans. James O'Brien. Tempe, Arizona: Arizona State University Press, 1988. ISBN 093925218X
 * The Clown's Mask.--The Immortal.--Rashō Gate.--Hell Screen.--Within a Grove.--The Shadow.

 * The Kyoto Collection: Stories from the Japanese. 1989
 * "The Faint Smiles of the Gods" translated by Tomoyoshi Genkawa & Bernard Susser.

 * Travels in China (Shina yuki). Trans. Joshua Fogel. Chinese Studies in History 30, no. 4 (1997).
 * Essential Akutagawa. New York: Marsilio Publishers, 1999. ISBN 1568860617
 * Rashomon.--The Nose.--Kesa and Morito.--The Spider's Thread.--Hell Screen.--The Ball.--Tu Tze-chun.--Autumn Mountain.--In a Grove.--The Faint Smiles of the Gods.--San Sebastian.--Cogwheels.--A Fool's Life.--A Note to a Certain Old Friend.
 * "Rashomon," "The Nose," "The Spider's Thread," "The Ball," & "In a Grove" translated by Seiji M. Lippit; "A Note to a Certain Old Friend" translated by Beongcheon Yu. Reprints translations by Britton, Corman & Kamaike, Genkawa & Susser, Hibbett, Kojima, Morris, Petersen, & Waley.

 * Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories. Trans. Jay Rubin. Penguin Classics, 2006. ISBN 0140449701
 * Rashomon.--In a Bamboo Grove.--The Nose.--Dragon: The Old Potter's Tale.--The Spider Thread.--Hell Screen.--Dr. Ogata Ryosai: Memorandum.--O-Gin.--Loyalty.--The Story of a Head That Fell Off.--Green Onions.--Horse Legs.--Daidoji Shinsuke: The Early Years.--The Writer's Craft.--The Baby's Sickness.--Death Register.--The Life of a Stupid Man.--Spinning Gears.

 * The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature, Vol. 1: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. ISBN 0231118600
 * "The Nose" translated by Ivan Morris and "Christ of Nanking" translated by Van C. Gessel; also has three of Akutagawas haikus translated by Makoto Ueda.

 * A Fool's Life. Trans. Anthony Barnett & Toraiwa Naoko. Lewes, England: Allardyce Books, 2007. ISBN 9780907954354
 * Mandarins. Trans. Charles De Wolf. Archipelago Books, 2007. ISBN 9780977857609
 * Mandarins.--At the Seashore.--An Evening Conversation.--The Handkerchief.--An Enlightened Husband.--Autumn.--Winter.--Fortune.--Kesa and Morito.--The Death of a Disciple.--O’er a Withered Moor.--The Garden.--The Life of a Fool.--The Villa of the Black Crane.--Cogwheels.

 * 3 Strange Tales. Trans. Glen Anderson. New York: One Peace Books, 2012. ISBN 9781935548126
 * Rashomon.--A Christian Death.--Agni.--In a Grove. [sic]

 * Murder in the Age of Enlightenment: Essential Stories. Trans. Bryan Karetnyk. London: Pushkin Press, 2020. ISBN 9781782275558
 * The Spider's Thread.--In a Grove.--Hell Screen.--Murder in the Age of Enlightenment.--The General.--Madonna in Black.--Cogwheels.

 * In Dreams: The Very Short Stories of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. Trans. Ryan Choi. London: Paper + Ink, 2023. ISBN 9781911475569
 * Old Age.--In Dreams.--The Heron and the Mandarin Duck.--A Certain Socialist.--Sentences and Words.--Duck Hunting.--A Case of Two Fakes.--A Game of Tag.--Merchant Virgin Mary.--Jun'ichirō Tanizaki.--Pagoda Trees.--Frogs.--Kimono.--Snow.--Eastern Autumn.--Swamps I & II.--Kanzan and Jittoku.--Frosty Night.--Collecting Books.--River Fish Market--Dialogue with Hiroshi.--Tiger Stories.--A Moral Point.--Kachikachi Mountain.--Sennin.--Senjo.--Birthing Hut.--Masks.--As Food.--Hardship.--Strong Gifted Man, Weak Gifted Man.--The Women I Like in Romance Novels.--Flowers of the Sal Tree.--Garden Verdure.--On a Sunny Spring Day, Walking Idly Alone.--The Parrot: Notes on the Great Earthquake.--On Applause.--Memories from the Red Gate.--Yokosuka Scenes.--In the City (or Tokyo 1916).--Spring Nights.--Notes on Delirium.--Twenty Remarks on China.--Selected Notes from Kugenuma.--Ten Thorns.--Record of Eyes and Ears.--Nagasaki.--Karuizawa.--Hack Writer: A Play.--Tiger Stories: A Play)

English

 * Keene, Donald. Dawn to the West. Columbia University Press; (1998). ISBN 0-231-11435-4
 * Ueda, Makoto. Modern Japanese Writers and the Nature of Literature. Stanford University Press (1971). ISBN 0-8047-0904-1
 * Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories - the Chronology Chapter, Trans. Jay Rubin. Penguin Classics (2007). ISBN 978-0-14-303984-6

Japanese

 * Nakada, Masatoshi. Akutagawa Ryunosuke: Shosetsuka to haijin. Kanae Shobo (2000). ISBN 4-907846-03-7
 * Shibata, Takaji. Akutagawa Ryunosuke to Eibungaku. Yashio Shuppansha (1993). ISBN 4-89650-091-1
 * Takeuchi, Hiroshi. Akutagawa Ryunosuke no keiei goroku. PHP Kenkyujo (1983). ISBN 4-569-21026-0
 * Tomoda, Etsuo. Shoki Akutagawa Ryunosuke ron. Kanrin Shobo (1984). ISBN 4-906424-49-X

title: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa


text:
Chiaki J. Konaka

Chiaki J. Konaka (小中 千昭) is a Japanese writer and novelist. He was the head writer of anime series such as Serial Experiments Lain, Digimon Tamers, and Hellsing, as well as the television drama Ultraman Gaia.

Personal life
Konaka was born in Tokyo, Japan on 4 April 1961. His interest in filmmaking began at the age of 10, influenced by his parents' love for movies and the wide range of film genres he experienced as a child.

Konaka gave himself the middle initial "J", evoking the Christian name "John", due to him being born to parents who were members of the Anglican Church, but he does not identify as Christian. He began using the middle initial at the age of 12, when he started making 8 mm films, patterning the style after Western names such as Charles M. Schulz. Following this, he received a camera of his own, and by middle school finished a film called Invader.

Upon entering Seikei High School, Konaka joined the school's film club where he met Makoto Tezuka who was his senior. His films during this period adopted largely science-fiction themes, and it wasn't until watching The Exorcist and The Legend of Hell House that he began to garner an interest in horror.

While working in special effects after graduating college, Konaka was offered his first scriptwriting job on Teruyoshi Ishii's 1988 Japanese horror film Jaganrei. This served as a starting point for working on future projects.

He has previously worked as a screenwriting instructor at The Film School of Tokyo.

Artistry and themes
Konaka's serious works generally have a dark, psychological tone. As a Cthulhu Mythos writer, he tends to add Lovecraftian elements to his works. He has cited Ghost Hound as his favorite screenwriting project.

The story-line of the early episodes of Digimon Tamers was based on one of the original scripts by Chiaki and Kazuya Konaka for Gamera: Guardian of the Universe in 1995 before the final draft by Kazunori Itō. Konaka brothers' plot was later used for Digimon Tamers and Gamera the Brave in 2006.

Controversy
In 2021, Konaka wrote a stage drama for Digimon Tamers' 20th anniversary that was performed at DigiFes 2021, an official Digimon event held annually on August 1. The drama featured the cast of the show being confronted by a physical manifestation of "political correctness" that uses "cancel culture" as an attack. This brought attention to his blog meant for retrospective commentary on Digimon Tamers, in which he also discussed conspiracy theories, and sparked international controversy among Internet Digimon circles. In response, Konaka posted a statement in English addressed to his overseas fans on August 8, 2021, to explain his circumstances and to apologize for triggering a divide among the fandom.

Anime

 * Air Gear: Series composition, script
 * Armitage III: Screenplay
 * Astro Boy (2003): Script (eps 1-3, 14)
 * The Big O: Screenplay, script
 * Birdy the Mighty: Screenplay
 * Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040: Screenplay
 * Catnapped!: Screenplay
 * Despera: Script
 * Devil Lady: Script (episodes 1–5, 8, 12, 18, 25–26), series composition
 * Digimon Adventure 02: Scenario (episode 13)
 * Digimon Tamers: Series composition, script (episodes 1–3, 7, 13–14, 23–24, 34–35, 41, 44–45, 49–51)
 * Futari Ecchi: Script
 * Gasaraki: Script
 * GeGeGe no Kitarō (1996): Script (Episode 89 only)
 * Ghost Hound: Series composition, screenplay
 * GR: Giant Robo: Series composition
 * Hellsing: Series composition, script (episodes 1–6, 8–9, 11–13)
 * Magic User's Club: Script (eps 2–6), novelization (1,2,5,6)
 * Malice@Doll: Script, original story
 * Mononoke: Script
 * Parasite Dolls: Script
 * Princess Tutu: Script (4, 9, 22, 23)
 * RahXephon: Screenplay (episodes 11–12, 17–18, 24–25)
 * RahXephon: Pluralitas Concentio: Screenplay
 * Serial Experiments Lain: Miniseries composition, script
 * Shadow Star: Series composition, script (eps 1–3, 12–13)
 * Texhnolyze: Series composition, script, scenario (episodes 1–4, 6, 12, 20–22)
 * Undead Girl Murder Farce: Script (eps 5-8)
 * Vampire Princess Miyu: Script (ep 20)

Television dramas

 * Ultraman: Towards the Future: Original story (episodes 4, 11)
 * Ultraman Tiga: Screenplay (eps 3, 5-6, 9, 19-20, 25, 34-35, 43-44, 50-52)
 * Ultraman Gaia: Series composition, screenplay (eps 1-3, 5, 10, 18, 26, 40, 42, 50-51)
 * Ultra Q: Dark Fantasy: Screenplay (episodes 7, 24-25)
 * Ultraman Max: Screenplay (eps 27, 29-30, 38-39)

Cthulhu Mythos

 * Cthulhu's Strange Record
 * Insumasu wo Oou Kage (a Japanese television adaptation of The Shadow Over Innsmouth)
 * "Terror Rate", a short story included in Volume 2 of the Lairs of the Hidden Gods anthology (Kurodahan Press: ISBN 4-902075-12-1)

Novel

 * Marebito (also screenplay of 2004 feature film)

Video games

 * Serial Experiments Lain
 * Kowloon's Curse

title: Chiaki J. Konaka


text:
On Watanabe

On Watanabe (渡辺 温) was a Japanese mystery writer and fantasy novelist. Despite his early death aged 27, he was an inspiration for later Japanese authors.

Biography
Watanabe was born in Yakomura, Kamiiso District, Hokkaido (now Hokuto City). His real name was Yutaka Watanabe. He was the third son of Itaro Watanabe and Tsune Watanabe, and the younger brother of detective writer Keisuke Watanabe. In February 1905, the family moved to Fukagawa, Tokyo, and he spent his childhood in company housing in a slum area. In August 1912, he moved to Takasuzu Village, Taga District in Ibaraki Prefecture (now Hitachi City). In 1920, he graduated from Mito Junior High School and entered Keio University's Literature Preparatory Course, but dropped out in April 1921. In April 1922, he entered Keio High School. Around this time, he started living with his brother Keisuke and the writer Kōtarō Fukuda.

In 1924, he submitted "Shadows" to a competition for film drafts held by the Plato Publishing magazines Josei and Kuraku and won the first prize. The judges on this occasion were Jun'ichirō Tanizaki and Kaoru Osanai. Around this time, he became acquainted with Michiko Oikawa, an actress at the Tsukiji Shōgekijō (Tsukiji Little Theatre), and started a romantic relationship, but because Oikawa was sickly the people around him opposed marriage and he gave up on it.

In March 1926, he graduated from Keio High School. In January 1927 he was recruited by Masashi Yokomizo, who had been appointed as the second editor-in-chief of Shin Seinen (“New Youth”) magazine, and joined publisher Hakubunkan as an editorial assistant. He is said to have worn morning dress and a top hat when going to Hakubunkan’s offices, at that time a clear exhibition of his commitment to modernism.

In July 1928, he left Hakubunkan to concentrate on his own creative activities. In April 1929, together with Keisuke, he translated work by Edogawa Ranpo for the publication of The Poe, Hoffmann Collection (part of The Kozeisha Complete Works of World Popular Literature, Volume 30; both of them were in charge of Edgar Allan Poe). In addition, he recommended that Keisuke write a detective novel as potential material for the silent film star Tokihiko Okada, and this resulted in Keisuke's maiden work, Madonna with False Eyes (Shin Seinen, June issue). In November, he returned to work at the Shin Seinen editorial department.

On 9 February 1930, with translator Shigeji Narahara (Shuji Hasegawa), he visited Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, who was living in Okamoto near Kobe (now Higashinada Ward, Kobe City), to persuade him to write an essay for Shin Seinen. That night (around 1:50 a.m. on the following day, the 10th), a freight train collided with his taxi at a railroad crossing in Shukugawa. He was taken to Nishinomiya Regeneration Hospital, but died of cerebral contusion. Narahara, who was in the taxi with him, was also injured but survived.

Tanizaki published his eulogy for Watanabe entitled Shunkan in the April 1930 issue of Shin Seinen. The incident was the motivation for Tanizaki to write The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi, and it was serialized in the same magazine from 1931 onwards.

Major works
For more, see Descendants of Androgynous: The Complete Works of On Watanabe.
 * 影 (Shadows), published simultaneously in the January 1925 issues of both Kuraku and Josei magazines. First published under the name "Yu Watanabe". Debut publication.
 * 少女 (Girl), "Mita Bungeijin" July 1925 issue. First published under the name " Yutaka Watanabe". Reprinted in Shin Seinen March 1929 issue
 * 兵隊の死 (Death of a Soldier), reprinted in January 1927 issue of Detective Hobby, and April 1930 issue of Shin Seinen
 * 嘘 (Lie), Shin Seinen March 1927 issue
 * 氷れる花嫁 (The Ice Bride), Shin Seinen April 1927 issue
 * 父を失ふ話 (The Story of Losing My Father), Detective Hobby July 1927 issue
 * 可哀相な姉 (The Poor Sister), Shin Seinen October 1927 issue
 * シルクハット (Silk Hat), Detective Hobby April 1928 issue
 * ああ華族様だよと私は嘘を吐（つ） (I Lied That I Was a Nobleman), Kodan Zasshi April 1929 issue
 * アンドロギュノスの裔 (Descendants of Androgynous), Shin Seinen August 1929 issue

Watanabe’s works await translation into English.

title: On Watanabe


text:
Sosen Mishima

Sosen Mishima (三島 霜川) was a Japanese writer from Takaoka, Toyama, Japan.

title: Sosen Mishima


text:
Shūsei Tokuda

Shūsei Tokuda (徳田秋声) was a Japanese writer.

Life
Tokuda was born in Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture. Coming from a family of the former feudal nobility, Tokuda began his literary life as a follower of the writer Ozaki Kōyō, who was four years his senior and had already established himself as a literary man in the late 1880s. Their relationship wasn't to last long, though, with Kōyō dying in 1903, after which Tokuda began to move from Kōyō's style of romanticism into a mixture of naturalism and the confessional known as "Shizen-shugi", an example of which is his 1908 novel Arajotai (新世帯), which dealt with the frustrations of a young working-class couple.

After the publication of Ashiato (足迹) in 1910, Tokuda would release his most autobiographical work, Kabi (黴), in 1911, a classic example of the Japanese genre known as the "I-novel". He followed with the novel Rough Living (Arakure, あらくれ) in 1915.

After the death of his wife in 1926, Tokuda began a series of relationships with younger women, which would inspire his later works, especially his best-known, Kasō jinbutsu (仮装人物), released from 1935 to 1938, as well as the unfinished Shukuzu (縮図) from 1941.

Legacy
A number of Tokuda's works were adapted into films in Japan. A monument honoring Tokuda was erected near the summit of Mount Utatsu in 1947. The monument features writing authored by poet Murō Saisei and was designed by architect Yoshirō Taniguchi.

Selected works

 * 1910: Ashiato
 * 1911: Kabi
 * 1915: Rough Living (Arakure)
 * 1933: The Town's Dance Hall (Machi no odoriba)
 * 1935: Order of the White Paulownia (Kunshō)
 * 1935–1938: Kasō jinbutsu
 * 1941: Shukuzu (unfinished)

Adaptations (selected)

 * 1953: Epitome (Shukuzu), director Kaneto Shindō
 * 1957: Untamed (Arakure), director Mikio Naruse
 * 1962: Stolen Pleasure (Tadare), director Yasuzō Masumura

title: Shūsei Tokuda


text:
Shimada Ichirō

Shimada Ichirō (島田 一郎) was a Japanese samurai who lived during the transition from the Edo period to the Meiji era. He is best known for his role in the assassination of Ōkubo Toshimichi.

Background
Shimada Ichirō was born to an ashigaru in the Kaga Domain (modern city of Kanazawa), which was later merged to the Ishikawa Prefecture by the Meiji government.

Following the death of Saigō Takamori during the Satsuma Rebellion, a group samurais among his sympathizers formed an antigovernment faction called Sankō-ji, led by Shimada. The faction began plotting the assassination of Kido Takayoshi and Ōkubo Toshimichi to avenge Saigō. However, the passing of Kido on May 26, 1877 shifted the focus solely on Ōkubo.

Shimada along with Chō Tsurahide disappeared from Kanazawa in March 1878, keeping the central government on high alert. Shimada left his family with poetry, setting his motives and coming to terms with his demise.

On May 14, 1878 in Tokyo, Shimada along with six other men, dragged Ōkubo out of a carriage and cut his throat and left the body with their weapons and an explanatory note. Immediately after, they turned themselves in to a nearby palace. All were executed in July of the same year.

title: Shimada Ichirō


text:
Takeo Arishima

Takeo Arishima (有島 武郎) was a Japanese novelist, short-story writer and essayist during the late Meiji and Taishō periods. His two younger brothers, Ikuma Arishima (有島生馬) and Ton Satomi (里美弴), were also authors. His son was the internationally known film and stage actor, Masayuki Mori.

Early life
Arishima was born in Tokyo, Japan into a wealthy family as the son of an ex-samurai official in the Ministry of Finance. He was first sent to a mission school in Yokohama, where he was taught English, after which he entered preparatory school of the prestigious Gakushuin peer's school, when he was 10 years old.

After he graduated from the Gakushuin at age 19, he entered the Sapporo Agricultural College (the present-day Faculty of Agriculture at Hokkaido University). During his studies at the university, he attempted suicide with Kokichi Morimoto (森本厚吉). The suicide failed, and Arishima subsequently became influenced by Uchimura Kanzō and became a Christian in 1901. Morimoto later went on to establish several women's schools around Japan.

After graduation and a mandatory short stint in the Imperial Japanese Army, Arishima took English lessons from Mary Elkinton Nitobe, Inazo Nitobe's wife, and in July 1903, he obtained a position as a foreign correspondent in the United States for the Mainichi Shimbun. In the United States he enrolled at Haverford College (a Quaker institution outside of Philadelphia) and later Harvard University. After graduation, he briefly worked in an insane asylum operated by the Quaker sect. He recorded his experiences from his journey to America in his diary.

During his time in America, he became critical towards Christianity, attracted to socialism, and influenced by the works of writers such as Walt Whitman, Henrik Ibsen, and Peter Kropotkin. His time and experiences in America and subsequent year in Europe also profoundly influenced his writing style and his outlook on the world, resulting in feelings of alienation from Japanese society.

After he returned to Japan in 1907, he re-entered the army briefly before becoming an English and ethics teacher in 1909 at his alma mater.

Literary career
Through his brother Arishima Ikuma, he also became acquainted with authors who graduated from the Gakushuin, including Naoya Shiga and Saneatsu Mushanokōji. Arishima and these writers formed a group, which was named after their literary magazine Shirakaba (白樺), which was first published in 1911. He wrote novels and literary criticisms and was known as one of the central figures in the Shirakaba group.

Arishima first achieved fame in 1917 with The Descendents of Cain (カインの末裔), which depicts God’s curse on both man and nature through the eyes of a self-destructive tenant farmer. In 1919 he published his best-known work: A Certain Woman (或る女), a moral and psychological melodrama about a strong-willed woman struggling against a hypocritical male-dominated society. While critically acclaimed for his style, the themes and characters of Arishima’s works did not appeal to many contemporary Japanese readers.

Later life
In 1922, Arishima implemented the socialist philosophy he had been developing by renunciation of the ownership of a large tenant farm in Hokkaidō, which he had inherited from his father, publicly stating that he wanted to distance himself from the petit bourgeois in the coming revolution.

Arishima married in 1910, but his wife died in 1916 of tuberculosis leaving him three children. In 1922, Arishima met Akiko Hatano, a married woman and an editor working for the Fujin Koron, a famous women's magazine. Their relationship quickly developed into an extramarital affair, which came to be known by Hatano's husband. This led to Arishima and Hatano committing suicide in Karuizawa by hanging themselves. Due to the isolated location, their bodies were not discovered for over a month, and were identified largely by the suicide note left behind. Arishima's grave is at the Tama Cemetery in Tokyo.

Legacy
After his death, Arishima became known for his detailed diaries, covering more than twenty volumes, with an intimate record of his life, fears and hopes. His contemporaries regarded Arishima as a philosopher and social critic as much as a novelist. His writing was critical of Christianity and strongly influenced by socialism; emotionally intense, humanistic, and employed ideas from the Bible, Tolstoy, and anarchic socialism.

Arishima's major works include:
 * Aru Onna (或る女) 1919
 * Kain no Matsuei (カインの末裔), 1917

Available in English

 * A Certain Woman, transl. by Kenneth Strong, University of Tokyo Press, 1978, 382 pages, ISBN 0-86008-237-7.
 * Labyrinth. Madison Books (2000). ISBN 0-8191-8293-1
 * The Descendants of Cain, transl. by John Morrison, University of Utah Press, 1955.
 * The Agony of Coming Into the World. Hokuseido Press (1955). ASIN: B0006AV8GE
 * Death (A Play), transl. by Yozan Iwasaki and Glenn Hughes, D. Appleton and Company, NY, 1930.

title: Takeo Arishima


text:
Chūya Nakahara

Chūya Nakahara (中原 中也), born Chūya Kashimura (柏村 中也), was a Japanese poet active during the early Shōwa period. Originally shaped by Dada and other forms of European (mainly French) experimental poetry, he was one of the leading renovators of Japanese poetry. Although he died at the young age of 30, he wrote more than 350 poems throughout his life. Many called him the "Japanese Rimbaud" for his affinities with the French poet whose poems he translated in 1934.

Early life
Chūya Nakahara was born in Yamaguchi, where his father, Kensuke Kashimura, was a highly decorated army doctor. Kensuke married Fuku Nakahara and was adopted by the Nakahara family shortly after the birth of their son, officially changing their last name to Nakahara. In Nakahara's earliest years, his father was sent to Hiroshima and Kanazawa where the family followed, only returning to Yamaguchi in 1914. In 1917, Kensuke established his own clinic in the location where nowadays stands the Nakahara Chūya Memorial Hall.

Since his parents had not been blessed with children for six years after their marriage, and because they had no children in the Nakahara family's hometown, they were delighted with the birth of their first son and celebrated it for three days.

Education and literary beginnings
As the eldest son of a prominent doctor, Nakahara was expected to become one himself. Due to the high expectations of his father, Nakahara was given a very strict education, which also prevented him from enjoying an ordinary childhood. Worried about the public morals of the town, Kensuke forbid his son from playing outside with children from a different class to their own. Another example of these restrictions is that, unlike his younger brothers, he was not allowed to bathe in the river for fear that he would drown. As he grew up, severe punishments were inflicted upon him; a common one was being made to stand upright facing the wall. Any sudden move would cause to receive a burn on the heel with a cigarette ember. However, the biggest punishment was being confined to sleep in the barn, which Chūya received dozens of times compared to his brothers. This was intended to prepare him to follow Kensuke's footsteps and to become the head of the family.

As a middle schooler, Nakahara had excellent grades and was called a prodigy child. It was the death of his younger brother Tsugurō in 1915 when he was 8 years old, which awakened him to literature. Grief-driven, he turned to compose poetry. He submitted his first three verses to a women's magazine and local newspaper in 1920 when he was still in elementary school. In the same year, he passed the entrance examination to Yamaguchi Junior High School with brilliant results. It was from this point onwards that he started to rebel against his father's strictness. He no longer studied and his grades began to drop as he became increasingly absorbed by literature. Kensuke was extremely afraid of the influence of literature on his son. Once, having found a work of fiction Nakahara had hidden, he severely scolded him and, once again, confined him in the barn. It was around this time when Nakahara also began to drink and smoke, making his grades go even lower.

In 1923, he failed his third-year examination. It is said that Nakahara invited a friend to his study room, broke the answer sheet, and chanted "hurrah". The failure seems to have been deliberate. For as long as he did not fail, he was bound to remain under his strict parents' surveillance. On the other hand, Kensuke received the news with utter shock at what meant to him a deep humiliation. He resorted once more to striking his son and keeping him in the barn on the cold night of March. Regardless of this, Nakahara insisted on not going back to this school. This culminated in his father's defeat, ultimately leading to an apology for his “educational policy”. In light of these events, he was transferred to the Ritsumeikan Middle School in Kyoto, where Nakahara begin to live alone but still, and until the end of his days, at the expense of his family.

In Kyoto he found many of the influences that would ultimately shape him as a poet. He read Shinkichi Takahashi's Dadaist poetry, which shocked him into starting to write again. This artistic movement became a part of his poetic lifestyle and later earned him the nickname “Dada-san”. In winter he met the actress Yasuko Hasegawa, three years his senior, and in April 1924 they began living together. It is also in this very year that Chūya became friends with fellow poet Tominaga Tarō. After completing Junior High School, Chūya and Yasuko decided to follow Tominaga to Tokyo, on the basis of attending university there. As he was unable to take the exam due to a lack of documents or being late, he was sent out by his family on the condition that he would go to a preparatory school instead.

After dropping the preparatory course in 1926, of which his parents were not informed, he started studying French at the Athénée Français.

Literary career
His verse has been considered somewhat obscure, and confessional and gives a general impression of pain and melancholy, emotions which were a constant throughout the poet's life. Initially, Nakahara favored poetry in the Japanese traditional tanka format, but he was later (in his teens) attracted to the modern free verse styles advocated by the Dadaist poet Takahashi Shinkichi and by Tominaga Tarō. After he moved to Tokyo, he met Kawakami Tetsutaro and Shōhei Ōoka, with whom he began publishing a poetry journal, Hakuchigun (Group of Idiots). He was befriended by the influential literary critic Kobayashi Hideo, who introduced him to the French symbolist poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, whose poems he translated into Japanese. The influence of Rimbaud went beyond just his poetry, and Nakahara came to be known for his "bohemian" lifestyle.

Nakahara adapted the traditional counts of five and seven used in Japanese haiku and tanka, but frequently tripped these counts with variations, in order to obtain a rhythmical, musical effect. Several of his poems were used as lyrics in songs, so this musical effect may have been carefully calculated from the start. Chūya's works were rejected by many publishers, and he found acceptance primarily with the smaller literary magazines, including Yamamayu, which he launched together with Hideo Kobayashi, (although on occasion Shiki and Bungakukai would condescend to publish one of his works). He remained close friends with Kobayashi all of his life, despite the fact that in November 1925 Yasuko Hasegawa left Nakahara and began living with Kobayashi Hideo instead. This event took place right after the loss of his friend Tominaga. In December 1927, he met composer Saburō Moroi, who later adapted a number of his verses to music, such as Asa no Uta (朝の歌, "Morning Song") and Rinjū (臨終, "Deathbed"). In April 1931, Chūya was admitted to the Tokyo Foreign Language College in Kanda to study the French language, where he remained until March 1933.

Nakahara married Takako Ueno (a distant relative) in December 1933, and his first son, Fumiya, was born in October 1934. However, the death of his son in November 1936, due to tuberculosis, sent him into a nervous breakdown. Nakahara never fully recovered from this, despite the birth of his second son in December. Many of his later poems seem like remembrances and attempts to mitigate this enormous pain.

Nakahara was hospitalized in Chiba sanatorium in January 1937. In February, he was released and moved back to Kamakura, as he could not stand to continue living in the house which contained the memories of Fumiya. He left a number of his works with Kobayashi and was making plans to return to his hometown of Yamaguchi when he died in October 1937, at the age of 30, of tubercular meningitis. Shortly after, his second son died of the same illness. His grave is in his hometown of Yamaguchi. This is the very family grave that appears in his uncollected poem "Cicadas" (蟬, Semi).

Legacy
Only one of his poetry anthologies, Yagi no Uta (山羊の歌, "Goat Songs", 1934) was published while he was alive (in a self-financed edition of two hundred copies). He edited a second collection, Arishi Hi no Uta (在りし日の歌, "Songs of Bygone Days", 1938) just before his death. During his lifetime, Nakahara was not counted among the mainstream poets. However, the emotional and lyrical nature of his verses has a wide and increasing following even to this day, especially among young people. Nakahara is now a subject of classroom study in Japanese schools, and his portrait in a hat with a vacant stare is well known. Kobayashi Hideo, to whom Nakahara entrusted the manuscript for Arishi Hi no Uta on his deathbed, was responsible for the posthumous promotion of his works. So was Ooka Shohei for collecting and editing The Complete Works of Nakahara Chūya, a collection containing the poet's uncollected poems, his journals, and many letters.
 * The Nakahara Chūya Prize was established in 1996 by Yamaguchi city (with the support of publishers Seidosha and Kadokawa Shoten) in Chūya's memory. The award is presented annually to an outstanding collection of contemporary poetry characterized by a "fresh sensibility" (shinsen na kankaku). The winner receives a cash award of 1 million yen, and for several years, the winning collection was also published in an English language translation, but in recent years, the administrations of the award have stopped translating the winner.
 * The acid-folk singer Kazuki Tomokawa recorded two albums entitled Ore no Uchide Nariymanai Uta and Nakahara Chuya Sakuhinnshu, using Nakahara's poems as lyrics.

BSD Slater
Bungou Stray Dogs

title: Chūya Nakahara


text:
Usui Kojima

Usui Kojima (小島 烏水) was a Japanese author from Yokohama, Japan who authored over 20 books. He was also known for amassing a collection of over 900 ukiyo-e prints and establishing Japan's first mountaineering society.

title: Usui Kojima


text:
Hiroo Yamagata

Hiroo Yamagata (山形 浩生) is a Japanese author, critic, economist and translator. He translated some works in computer technology such as The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace by Lawrence Lessig into Japanese.

He is the founder and chairman of Project Sugita Genpaku, which is a volunteer effort to translate free content texts into Japanese.

title: Hiroo Yamagata


text:
Yoshiki Hayama

Yoshiki Hayama (葉山 嘉樹) was a Japanese author associated with the Japanese proletarian literature movement.

He is perhaps best known for Men Who Live on the Sea (海に生くる人々, Umi ni Ikuru Hitobito), a 1926 novel about the appalling labor conditions on a cargo ship plying the Japan trade lanes, and for short stories such as The Prostitute (淫売婦), an early example of proletarian literature in Japan.

He spent time in jail due to his involvement with the labor movement, but later turned away from Marxism and became an enthusiastic supporter of Japanese imperialism.

title: Yoshiki Hayama


text:
Uchimura Kanzō

Uchimura Kanzō (内村 鑑三) was a Japanese author, Christian evangelist, and the founder of the Nonchurch Movement (Mukyōkai) of Christianity during the Meiji and Taishō periods in Japan. He is often considered to be the most well-known Japanese pre-World War II pacifist.

Early life
Uchimura was born in Edo, and exhibited a talent for languages from a very early age; he started to study the English language at the age of 11. At age 13 he entered a foreign language school to continue to study English, and planned to pursue a government job. In 1877, he gained admission to the Sapporo Agricultural College (present-day Hokkaido University), where English was the main language of instruction.

Prior to Uchimura's arrival, William S. Clark, a graduate as well as the president of Amherst College, had spent the year assisting the Japanese government in establishing the college. While his primary role was to teach agricultural technology, Clark was a committed lay Christian missionary who introduced his students to the Christian faith through Bible classes. All of his students converted and signed the "Covenant of Believers in Jesus", committing themselves to continue studying the Bible and to do their best to live moral lives. Clark returned to the United States after one year, but Uchimura felt his influence through the small Covenant group that was left behind. Under considerable pressure from his senpai (先輩, a term for strongly-influential senior peers), Uchimura signed the Covenant during his first year at the College at the age of 16 and went on to receive baptism from a Methodist missionary in 1878.

Dissatisfaction with the mission church, however, led Uchimura and his Japanese supporters to establish an independent church in Sapporo. This experiment turned out to be a precursor to what is now called the Nonchurch Movement. Through Clark's teaching and example, this small group believed that they could practice and live an authentic life of faith without depending on a religious institution or a professional clergy.

He was a close friend of P. Y. Saeki, an Anglican, but their relationship turned sour later.

Overseas career
Uchimura departed for the United States following a brief and unhappy first marriage in 1884. He was first befriended by Wister Morris and his wife, a Quaker couple, who helped him find employment at Elwyn Institutes as a caregiver shortly after his arrival in Pennsylvania. The Quaker faith and pacifism made a lasting impression upon Uchimura. He and his Sapporo friend Nitobe Inazō were influential in the establishment of the Friends School in Tokyo as a result of his sojourning in the Philadelphia area.

Following eight months of stressful work in Elwyn, Uchimura resigned and traveled through New England, entering Amherst College in September 1885. Julius Hawley Seelye, the president of Amherst College, became his spiritual mentor, and encouraged him to attend the Hartford Theological Seminary. After completing his second bachelor's degree (B.Sc.) in general science at Amherst, he enrolled in Hartford Seminary, but quit after only one semester, disappointed by theological education. He returned to Japan in 1888.

Japanese religious leader
After his return to Japan, Uchimura worked as a teacher, but was fired or forced to resign in several instances over his uncompromising position toward authorities or foreign missionary bodies that controlled the schools. The most famous such incident was his refusal to bow deeply to the portrait of Emperor Meiji and the Imperial Rescript on Education in the formal ceremony held at the First Higher School (then preparatory division to the Tokyo Imperial University). Realizing that his religious beliefs were incompatible with a teaching career, he turned to writing, becoming senior columnist for the popular newspaper, Yorozu Chōhō. Uchimura's fame as a popular writer became solid as he launched a series of sharp criticism against industrialist Ichibei Furukawa over one of modern Japan's first industrial pollution cases involving Furukawa's Ashio Copper Mine.

Uchimura's career as a journalist was cut short as well, largely due to his pacifist views and vocal opposition against the Russo-Japanese War in his newspaper columns, which came into conflict with the paper's official editorial views. He started publishing and selling his own monthly magazine, Tokyo Zasshi (Tokyo Journal) and later Seisho no Kenkyu (Biblical Study), and supported himself by addressing weekly audiences of 500–1000 people in downtown Tokyo in lectures on the Bible. His followers came to share Uchimura's attitude that an organized church was actually a hindrance to the Christian faith, and Christian sacraments, such as baptism and communion, are not essential to salvation. Uchimura named his Christian position as "Mukyōkai" or Nonchurch Movement. Uchimura's movement attracted many students in Tokyo who later became influential figures in academia, industry, and literature. His "prophetic" views on religion, science, politics, and social issues became influential beyond his small group of followers.

His writings in English include: Japan and the Japanese (1894) and How I became a Christian (1895), and reflect his struggle to develop a Japanese form of Christianity. In his lifetime, Uchimura became famous overseas. His major English-language works were translated into numerous languages. After his death, however, Uchimura's reputation grew more, as his followers produced an enormous amount of literature.

Works

 * Japanese/English; new English translation: Kazuo Inamori
 * Japanese/English; new English translation: Kazuo Inamori
 * Japanese/English; new English translation: Kazuo Inamori
 * Japanese/English; new English translation: Kazuo Inamori
 * Japanese/English; new English translation: Kazuo Inamori
 * Japanese/English; new English translation: Kazuo Inamori
 * Japanese/English; new English translation: Kazuo Inamori
 * Japanese/English; new English translation: Kazuo Inamori
 * Japanese/English; new English translation: Kazuo Inamori
 * Japanese/English; new English translation: Kazuo Inamori

title: Uchimura Kanzō


text:
Osamu Dazai

Shūji Tsushima (津島 修治), known by his pen name Osamu Dazai (太宰 治), was a Japanese novelist and author. A number of his most popular works, such as The Setting Sun (Shayō) and No Longer Human (Ningen Shikkaku), are considered modern-day classics.

His influences include Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Murasaki Shikibu and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. While Dazai continues to be widely celebrated in Japan, he remains relatively unknown elsewhere, with only a handful of his works available in English. His last book, No Longer Human, is his most popular work outside of Japan.

Early life
Shūji Tsushima was born on June 19, 1909, the eighth surviving child of a wealthy landowner and politician in Kanagi, a remote corner of Japan at the northern tip of Tōhoku in Aomori Prefecture. He was the tenth of eleven children born by his parents. At the time of his birth, the huge, newly-completed Tsushima mansion, where he would spend his early years, was home to some thirty family members. The Tsushima family was of obscure peasant origins, with Dazai's great-grandfather building up the family's wealth as a moneylender, and his son increasing it further. They quickly rose in power and, after some time, became highly respected across the region.

Dazai's father, Gen'emon, was a younger son of the Matsuki family, which due to "its exceedingly 'feudal' tradition" had no use for sons other than the eldest son and heir. As a result, Gen'emon was adopted into the Tsushima family to marry the eldest daughter, Tane. He became involved in politics due to his position as one of the four wealthiest landowners in the prefecture, and was offered membership into the House of Peers. This caused Dazai's father to be absent during much of his early childhood; and with his mother, Tane, being ill, Dazai was brought up mostly by the family's servants and his aunt Kiye.

Education and literary beginnings
In 1916, Dazai began his education at Kanagi Elementary. On March 4, 1923, his father Gen'emon died from lung cancer. A month later, in April, Dazai attended Aomori Junior High School, followed by entering Hirosaki University's literature department in 1927. He developed an interest in Edo culture and began studying gidayū, a form of chanted narration used in bunraku. Around 1928, Dazai edited a series of student publications and contributed some of his own works. He also published a magazine called Saibō bungei (Cell Literature) with his friends, and subsequently became a staff member of the college's newspaper.

Dazai's success in writing was brought to a halt when his idol, the writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, committed suicide in 1927 at 35 years old. Dazai started to neglect his studies, and spent the majority of his allowance on clothes, alcohol, and prostitutes. He also dabbled with Marxism, which at the time was heavily suppressed by the government. On the night of December 10, 1929, Dazai made his first suicide attempt, but survived and was able to graduate the following year. In 1930, Dazai enrolled in the French Literature Department of Tokyo Imperial University and promptly stopped studying again. In October, he ran away with a geisha named Hatsuyo Oyama and was formally disowned by his family.

Nine days after being expelled from Tokyo Imperial University, Dazai attempted suicide by drowning off a beach in Kamakura with another woman, 19-year-old bar hostess Shimeko Tanabe. Tanabe died, but Dazai lived, was rescued by a fishing boat, and was charged as an accomplice in Tanabe's death. Shocked by the events, Dazai's family intervened to stop a police investigation. His allowance was reinstated, and he was released of any charges. In December, Dazai recovered at Ikarigaseki and married Hatsuyo there.

Leftist movement
In 1929, when its principal's misappropriation of public funds was discovered at Hirosaki High School, the students, under the leadership of Ueda Shigehiko (Ishigami Genichiro), leader of the Social Science Study Group, staged a five-day allied strike, which resulted in the principal's resignation and no disciplinary action against the students. Dazai hardly participated in the strike, but in imitation of the proletarian literature in vogue at the time, he summarized the incident in a novel called Student Group and read it to Ueda. The Tsushima family was wary of Dazai's leftist activities. On January 16 of the following year, the Special High Police arrested Ueda and nine other students of the Hiroko Institute of Social Studies, who were working as activists for Seigen Tanaka's armed Communist Party.

In college, Dazai met activist Eizo Kudo, and made a monthly financial contribution of ¥10 to the Japanese Communist Party. The reason he was expelled from his family after his marriage to Hatsuyo Oyama was to prevent the association of illegal activities with Bunji, who was a politician. After his marriage, Dazai was ordered to hide his sympathies and moved repeatedly. In July 1932, Bunji tracked him down, and had him turn himself in at the Aomori Police Station. In December, Dazai signed and sealed a pledge at the Aomori Prosecutor's Office to completely withdraw from leftist activities.

Early literary career
Dazai kept his promise and settled down a bit. He managed to obtain the assistance of established writer Masuji Ibuse, whose connections helped him get his works published and establish his reputation. The next few years were productive for Dazai. He wrote at a feverish pace and used the pen name "Osamu Dazai" for the first time in a short story called "Ressha" ("列車", "Train") in 1933. This story was his first experiment with the I-novel that later became his trademark.

In 1935 it started to become clear to Dazai that he would not graduate. He failed to obtain a job at a Tokyo newspaper as well. Dazai finished The Final Years (Bannen), which was intended to be his farewell to the world, and tried to hang himself March 19, 1935, failing yet again. Less than three weeks later, Dazai developed acute appendicitis and was hospitalized. In the hospital, he became addicted to Pavinal, a morphine-based painkiller. After fighting the addiction for a year, in October 1936 he was taken to a mental institution, locked in a room and forced to quit cold turkey.

The treatment lasted over a month. During this time Dazai's wife Hatsuyo committed adultery with his best friend Zenshirō Kodate. This eventually came to light, and Dazai attempted to commit shinjū with his wife. They both took sleeping pills, but neither died. Soon after, Dazai divorced Hatsuyo. He quickly remarried, this time to a middle school teacher named Michiko Ishihara (石原美知子). Their first daughter, Sonoko (園子), was born in June 1941.

The year before last I was expelled from my family and, reduced to poverty overnight, was left to wander the streets, begging help for various quarters, barely managing to stay alive from one day to the next, and just when I'd begun to think I might be able to support myself with my writing, I came down with a serious illness. Thanks to the compassion of others, I was able to rent a small house in Funabashi, Chiba, next to the muddy sea, and spent the summer there alone, convalescing. Though battling an illness that each and every night left my robe literally drenched with sweat, I had no choice but to press ahead with my work. The cold half pint of milk I drank each morning was the only thing that gave me a certain peculiar sense of the joy in life; my mental anguish and exhaustion were such that the oleanders blooming in one corner of the garden appeared to me merely flicking tongues of flame...

In the 1930s and 1940s, Dazai wrote a number of subtle novels and short stories that are autobiographical in nature. His first story, Gyofukuki (魚服記, "Transformation", 1933), is a grim fantasy involving suicide. Other stories written during this period include Dōke no hana (道化の花, "Flowers of Buffoonery", 1935), Gyakkō (逆行, "Losing Ground", 1935), Kyōgen no kami (狂言の神, "The God of Farce", 1936), an epistolary novel called Kyokō no Haru (虚構の春, False Spring, 1936) and those published in his 1936 collection Bannen (Declining Years or The Final Years), which describe his sense of personal isolation and his debauchery.

Wartime years
Japan widened the Pacific War by attacking the United States in December, but Dazai was excused from the draft because of his chronic chest problems, as he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. The censors became more reluctant to accept Dazai's offbeat work, but he managed to publish quite a bit regardless, remaining one of very few authors who managed to get this kind of material accepted in this period. A number of the stories which Dazai published during the war were retellings of stories by Ihara Saikaku (1642–1693). His wartime works included Udaijin Sanetomo (右大臣実朝, "Minister of the Right Sanetomo", 1943), Tsugaru (1944), Pandora no Hako (パンドラの匣, Pandora's Box, 1945–46), and Otogizōshi (お伽草紙, Fairy Tales, 1945) in which he retold a number of old Japanese fairy tales with "vividness and wit."

Dazai's house was burned down twice in the American bombing of Tokyo, but his family escaped unscathed and gained a son, Masaki (正樹), who was born in 1944. His third child, daughter Satoko (里子), who later became a famous writer under the pseudonym Yūko Tsushima, was born in May 1947.

Postwar career
In the immediate postwar period, Dazai reached the height of his popularity. He depicted a dissolute life in postwar Tokyo in Viyon no Tsuma (ヴィヨンの妻, "Villon's Wife", 1947), depicting the wife of a poet who had abandoned her and her continuing will to live through hardships.

In 1946, Osamu Dazai released a controversial literary piece titled Kuno no Nenkan (Almanac of Pain), a political memoir of Dazai himself. It describes the immediate aftermath of losing the second World War, and encapsulates how Japanese people felt following the country's defeat. Dazai reaffirmed his loyalty to the Japanese Emperor of the time, Emperor Hirohito and his son Akihito. Dazai was a known communist throughout his career, and also expressed his beliefs through this Almanac of Pain.

On December 14, Dazai and a group of writers were joined by Yukio Mishima at a restaurant for dinner. The latter recalled that on that occasion, he gave vent to his dislike of Dazai. According to a later statement by Mishima:

"The disgust in which I hold Dazai's literature is in some way ferocious. First, I dislike his face. Second, I dislike his rustic preference for urban sophistication. Third, I dislike the fact that he played the roles that were not appropriate for him."

Other participants at the dinner could not remember if events occurred as Mishima described. They did report that he did not enjoy Dazai's "clowning" and that they had a dispute about Ōgai Mori, a writer Mishima admired.

Alongside this Dazai also wrote Jugonenkan (For Fifteen Years), another autobiographical piece. This, alongside Almanac of Pain, may serve as a prelude to a consideration of Dazai's postwar fiction.

In July 1947, Dazai's best-known work, Shayo (The Setting Sun, translated 1956) depicting the decline of the Japanese nobility after the war, was published, propelling the already popular writer into celebrityhood. This work was based on the diary of Shizuko Ōta (太田静子), an admirer of Dazai's works who first met him in 1941. The pair had a daughter, Haruko, (治子) in 1947.

A heavy drinker, Dazai became an alcoholic and his health deteriorated rapidly. At this time he met Tomie Yamazaki (山崎富栄), a beautician and war widow who had lost her husband after just ten days of marriage. Dazai effectively abandoned his wife and children and moved in with Tomie.

Dazai began writing his novel No Longer Human (人間失格 Ningen Shikkaku, 1948) at the hot-spring resort Atami. He moved to Ōmiya with Tomie and stayed there until mid-May, finishing his novel. A quasi-autobiography, it depicts a young, self-destructive man seeing himself as disqualified from the human race. The book is considered one of the classics of Japanese literature, and has been translated into several foreign languages.

In the spring of 1948, Dazai worked on a novella scheduled to be serialized in the Asahi Shimbun, titled Guddo bai (the Japanese pronunciation of the English word "Goodbye") but it was never finished.

Death
On June 13, 1948, Dazai and Tomie drowned themselves in the rain-swollen Tamagawa Canal, near his house. Their bodies were not discovered until six days later, on June 19, which would have been his 39th birthday. His grave is at the temple of Zenrin-ji, in Mitaka, Tokyo.

At the time, there was a lot of speculation about the incident, with theories of forced suicide by Tomie. Keikichi Nakahata, a kimono merchant who frequented the young Tsushima family, was shown the scene of the water ingress by a detective from the Mitaka police station. He speculated that "Dazai was asked to die, and he simply agreed, but just before his death, he suddenly felt an obsession with life".

Works
Since 2024, the complete works of Osamu Dazai are being translated into English for the first time and are planned to be published in twelve volumes by Erika Strohbach and Ananda Albuquerque Azevedo.

 * Dazai Osamu's Works (Volume 1): The complete works of the Japanese author in several volumes. Königswinter 2024. (translated by Erika Strohbach & Ananda Albuquerque Azevedo) ISBN 9798328945356

title: Osamu Dazai


text:
Denji Kuroshima

Denji Kuroshima (黒島 伝治) was a Japanese author.

Personal life
A largely self-taught writer of humble social origins, Kuroshima was born on Shōdoshima in the Inland Sea and went to Tokyo to work and study. Conscripted into the army in 1919, he was sent to fight in a doomed war against the USSR waged at the time by Japan and its allies, including the US and Britain. Upon his return, Kuroshima joined a flourishing proletarian literature movement and published his narratives in a variety of journals. His passionately anti-imperialist novel was researched in China. As his health began to fail in the early 1930s, Kuroshima returned to his native island where he lived with his wife and three children.

Works
One of modern Japan's most dedicated antimilitarist intellectuals, Kuroshima Denji is best known for his Siberian stories of the late 1920s – vivid descriptions of agonies suffered by Japanese soldiers and Russian civilians during Japan's invasion of the newly emerged Soviet Union. Kuroshima also wrote powerful narratives dealing with the hardships, struggles, and rare triumphs of Japanese peasants. His only full-length novel, Militarized Streets, a shocking description of economic and military aggression against China, was censored not only by Japan's imperial government, but by the US occupation authorities as well.

Literary style
Kuroshima's narratives—like those of Anton Chekhov, whom Kuroshima greatly admired—are unadorned in style, straightforward in storytelling, and attentive to detail. Their content conveys a sense of authenticity, grief over the unnecessary suffering, and above all the urgent need for change. Despite occasional flashes of humor and lyricism, the tone is seldom cheerful and happy endings are rare: Kuroshima refrains from accomplishing in fiction what is much harder to attain in actuality. Devoid of easy optimism, his stories are open-ended chronicles of abuse and resistance.

Ultimately, Kuroshima is convinced, only a vast international movement based on grassroots solidarity stands a chance of replacing a heartless status quo with a sane, livable world of justice and generosity. Meanwhile, faced with the daily tragedies of an irrationally structured world, radical artists everywhere are bound to persevere in their oppositional work. In his 1929 essay 'On Antiwar Literature,' Kuroshima writes: "So long as the capitalist system exists, proletarian antiwar literature must also exist, and fight against it."

title: Denji Kuroshima


text:
Doppo Kunikida

Doppo Kunikida (国木田 独歩) was a Japanese author of novels and romantic poetry during the Meiji period, noted as one of the inventors of Japanese naturalism.

Early life and education
Doppo Kunikida was born in Chōshi, Chiba as Tetsuo Kunikida. While some doubt exists as to his biological father, Doppo was raised by his mother and her samurai-class husband. The family moved to Tokyo in 1874, but relocated to Yamaguchi prefecture and Doppo grew up in Iwakuni. The rural area of Chōshū left Doppo with a love of nature and influenced the naturalism which later appeared in his literature. Doppo quit school in order to help support his family in 1888, but left for school in Tokyo in 1889.

He studied at the English department of Tōkyō Senmon Gakkō (now Waseda University). Interested in western democracy, he developed a defiant attitude to the school's administration and was expelled from the school in 1891. When he was 21 years old, he was baptized by Uemura Masahisa and became a Christian. His religion and the poetry of William Wordsworth influenced his later writing style.

Career and personal life
Kunikida founded a literary magazine Seinen bungaku (青年文學 "Literature for Youth") in 1892 and began his private diary Azamukazaru no ki (欺かざるの記 "An Honest Record", published after his death) in 1893, the same year he began teaching English, mathematics, and history in Saiki, another rural area of Japan.

In 1894, he joined the news staff of the Kokumin Shimbun newspaper as a war correspondent. His reports from the front during the First Sino-Japanese War, which were collected and re-published after his death as Aitei Tsushin, (愛弟通信 "Communiques to a Dear Brother") found high favor among the readers.

The following year, Kunikida settled with his parents in Tokyo, where he edited the magazine Kokumin no Tomo (國民の友 "The Nation's Friend") and met his future wife, Nobuko Sasaki, on whom Takeo Arishima is thought to have based his famous novel A Certain Woman. Against her parents' wishes (Nobuko's mother encouraged her to commit suicide rather than marry Doppo), the couple was married in November 1895. Kunikida's ensuing financial difficulties caused the pregnant Nobuko to divorce him after only five months. The failed marriage had a traumatic effect on Doppo, and his depression and mental anguish over the separation can be seen in Azamukazaru no Ki, published from 1908 to 1909.

Shortly after his divorce, Kunikida turned to the genre of romantic poetry when co-authored an anthology, Jojoshi (抒情詩 "Lyric Poems"), in 1897 with Katai Tayama and Kunio Matsuoka (a.k.a. Kunio Yanagita). Around this time, Kunikida published several poems that would eventually be collected in Doppo gin as well as the short story, Gen Oji (源叔父 "Uncle Gen"). Through his poetic style, Kunikida introduced a fresh current into romantic lyrical literature.

Kunikida remarried in 1898, to Haruko Enomoto, and published his first short-story collection, Musashino (武蔵野 "The Musashi Plain") in 1901, which portrayed people who fall behind the times.

However, Kunikida's style began to change. Although Haru no Tori (春の鳥 "Spring Birds"), written in 1904, reportedly reached the highest level of romanticism in his era, his later works, such as Kyushi (窮死 "A Poor Man's Death") and Take no Kido (竹の木戸 "The Bamboo Gate"), Kunikida indicate that he was turning more towards naturalism over romanticism.

Following the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, Kunikida started a publishing business that went bankrupt two years later. The same year he founded a magazine, Fujin Gahō.

Death
Kunikida contracted tuberculosis in 1907 and moved to a sanatorium in Chigasaki in early 1908. He died from the disease in 1908 at the age of 36. His grave is at Aoyama Cemetery in Tokyo.

Trivia

 * Kunikida is a protagonist in the anime Bungo Stray Dogs, which features major Japanese literary figures, their biographies, and their own works to create fictional characters. Kunikida's abilities in the series pay homage to his works as a poet. In the series, he works with the Armed Detective Agency and has an ability called 'Matchless Poet.' He is friends with the character named after Katai Tayama and the writer's short-lived relationship with Sasaki Nobuko also returns in the series.
 * Kunikida also appears in Bungo and Alchemist, a web-based browser game produced by EXNOA and published by DMM.com

In English

 * River Mist & Other Stories. Kodansha America (1983) ISBN 0-87011-591-X
 * Selected stories of Doppo Kunikida. Shichosha. ASIN: B00087VZWW

title: Doppo Kunikida


text:
Sakunosuke Oda

Sakunosuke Oda (織田 作之助) was a Japanese writer. He is often grouped with Osamu Dazai and Ango Sakaguchi as the Buraiha. Literally meaning ruffian or hoodlum faction, this label was not a matter of a stylistic school but one bestowed upon them by conservative critics disparaging the authors' attitudes and subject matter.

Life and Writings
Oda's writing career spans both prewar and postwar Japan. A native of Osaka, he wrote about most of life in that city and the customs and manners of the common people there. In 1939, his story Zokushu (俗臭, Vulgarity) was a candidate for the Akutagawa Prize. The following year, Oda published Meoto Zenzai (夫婦善哉). Named after an Osaka sweet shop, it follows the life of a couple whose relationship survives despite the persistent wastefulness, debauchery, and unkept promises of the erring man.

Oda's characters usually did not fit into what was traditionally considered appropriate forms, either in their frank humanness or in their stubborn individuality, as in Roppakukinsei (六白金星, Six Platinum Stars/Six White Venus, 1946), or out of the cruel necessity of survival. In the story Sesō (世相, The State of the Times, 1946), Oda describes the first months of the occupation period following Japan's surrender at the end of World War II, which were marked by food shortages so severe that government rations were not enough even to sustain life and people turned to the black market to procure the food they needed for their survival. During Oda's lifetime, several of his works were banned.

Oda also wrote radio drama scenarios and submitted a script to a magazine that was later made into the film Kaette kita otoko (還って来た男, The Returnee, 1944), by Kawashima Yūzō (it was the director's commercial debut).

In addition to his fiction, Oda wrote many critical essays, most notably "Kanōsei no bungaku" (可能性の文学, "The Literature of Possibility", 1946).

In 1947, after suffering from a lung hemorrhage, Oda died in Tokyo Hospital. After the funeral, his friend and fellow writer Osamu Dazai published an emotional eulogy blaming the critics for Oda's sudden death. More likely, it was from a recurrent bout of tuberculosis. Oda is buried in Osaka.

In 1963, a monument was erected by Oda's friends and colleagues near Hozenji Temple in Osaka. Hozenji Yokochō and its surrounding alleys are one of the main settings in Meoto Zenzai.

In 1983, under the sponsorship of the Osaka Bungaku Shinkōkai, a literary prize was established in Oda's name to commemorate the 70th anniversary of his birth and to carry on the long tradition of Kansai literature. It is awarded annually to an outstanding work of fiction by a new author.

An autographed photograph of Oda hangs in the Osaka restaurant Jiyūken (自由軒). Jiyūken opened as a coffee and snack shop in 1910, and has become known for its style of "curry rice". It is mentioned in Oda's writings. The inscription says that Oda has died, but has left us some of the good flavors of curry rice in his writing. The photograph shows Oda writing while seated at a table in Jiyūken.

Adaptations and Translations
Several of Oda's stories have been made into movies, including Deep Autumn (秋深き) (2008) and, most notably, Meoto zenzai, which has been adapted four times, including an award-winning film, released in 1955, which was directed by Toyoda Shirō, and starred Morishige Hisaya and Awashima Chikage.

Meoto zenzai, Roppakukinsei, and Sesō, along with another story, Ki no Miyako (木の都, "City of Trees", 1943–44), have been translated by Burton Watson and published together as Stories of Osaka Life (Columbia University Press, 1990; paperback, Weatherhill, 1994).

title: Sakunosuke Oda