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Ogai Mori And Japanese Literature

Although Mori did little writing from 1892 to 1902, he continued to edit a literary journal (Mezamashi gusa, 1892–1909). He also produced translations of the works of Goethe, Schiller, Ibsen, Hans Christian Andersen, and Hauptmann. It was during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) that Mori started keeping a poetic diary. After the war, he began holding tanka writing parties that included several noted poets such as Yosano Akiko. Mori Ōgai helped found a new magazine called Subaru (literary magazine) in 1909 with the help of others such as Yosano Akiko and Yosano Tekkan. His later works can be divided into three separate periods. From 1909 to 1912, he wrote mostly fiction based on his own experiences. This period includes Vita Sexualis and his most popular novel, Gan (雁, The Wild Geese, 1911–13), which is set in 1881 Tokyo and was filmed by Shirō Toyoda in 1953 as The Mistress.

How It Started

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

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

To elaborate on one of Ōgai’s earlier works, Dancing Girl (舞姫) was a story chronicling the love affair of a Japanese prodigy, Toyotarō, with an uneducated German woman Elis. During this affair, Elis gets pregnant, and he leaves her to return to Japan. Toyotarō spends much of his tale being torn between the life he leads in Germany with his new love, while being is pulled back to Japan by his job and family. He also spends a reasonable amount of time pondering his education, and the kind of a person it turned him into. His decision to leave her was instigated by his Japanese friend Aizawa, and the news drove Elis into madness, but despite this, Toyotarō was grateful for his friend’s meddling.[11] Throughout the time that Dancing Girl was written, following the fall of the Tokugawa Period and the beginning of the Meiji Restoration, an isolationist mindset was a common theme amongst other authors (such as Natsume Soseki, Junichiro Tanizaki, etc.). The drastic culture shift influenced a lot of authors to focus their individuality and feelings of isolation into their works through their principle characters. In Dancing Girl in particular, the traditionalism of Tokugawa Japan and familial duty is pulling Toyotaro back, while the Meiji Japan that encouraged international knowledge and duty to that Japan is keeping him there.Sansho Dayu was an early Japanese work written in the mid 1600's, and Ogai's rewrite of it essentially changed some minor details and the ending, wherein which the bailiff's punishment is not given as much attention as in the original, and it is not so much violent as it is politically appropriate. There are also numerous supernatural elements removed from the original story, making it palatable to a wider audience. Ogai's retelling of Sansho Dayu was made into a film, directed by Kenji Mizoguchi (1954).