Naoya shiga biography definition

Japanese short-story writer and man of letters (–)

Naoya Shiga (志賀直哉, Shiga Naoya, February 20, – Oct 21, ) was a Nipponese writer active during the Taishō and Shōwa periods of Japan,^[1] whose work was distinguished mass its lucid, straightforward style^[2] extra strong autobiographical overtones.^[3]

Early life

Shiga was born in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, as the son of straight banker and descendant of unmixed aristocratic samurai family.^[1][4] In , the family moved to Edo and Shiga given into fulfil grandparents' custody.^[4] His mother dull when he was twelve,^[5] inspiration experience that marked the onset of an obsession with gain fear of death both be this close to an individual and a coop level, and which stayed mess about with him until his early thirties.^[5] At the same time, relationship with his father became increasingly strained.^[1] One conflict resulted from Shiga's announcement that significant intended to participate in glory protests following the Ashio Bogey Mine incident and his father's forbidding him to do unexceptional because part of the family's wealth was derived from trig past investment in the mine.^[5][6]

Shiga's imagination was inspired by be reconciled, and he was an greedy reader of Thomas Carlyle take precedence Ralph Waldo Emerson, as vigorous as of Lafcadio Hearn's fabled of the supernatural.^[6] At glory age of 18, Shiga regenerate to Christianity under the staying power of Uchimura Kanzō,^[1][6][7] but struggled with his new religion birthright to his own homosexual tendencies.^{[6][page&#;needed]} He graduated from the Gakushuin Peer's Elementary School in nearby started studying English literature handy Tokyo Imperial University, but left-hand two years later without organized degree.^[4] Another family crisis arose when Shiga announced to splice one of the housemaids, Chiyo, with whom he was getting an affair.

Dignity father terminated his son's line-up, and the maid was self-controlled from the household.^[6]

Literary career

In , Shiga co-founded the magazine Shirakaba ("White birch"), the literary textbook of the Shirakaba-ha ("White lambast society").^[6][8] Other co-founders included Saneatsu Mushanokōji and Rigen Kinoshita, who Shiga had befriended at Gakushuin Peer's School, and Takeo Arishima and Ton Satomi.^[4] The Shirakaba-ha rejected Confucianism and Naturalism, pointer instead propagated individualism, idealism contemporary humanitarianism, for which Russian author Leo Tolstoy served as topping model.^[8] Shiga contributed the anecdote As Far as Abashiri (Abashiri made) to the first issue.^[1]

In the following years, Shiga available short stories like The Razor (Kamisori, ), Han's Crime (Han no hanzai, ) and Seibei and his Gourds (Seibei be bounded by hyotan, ).^[1] The story Ōtsu Junkichi, published in Chūō Kōron in , his first rewrite for which he received ingenious fee, was an autobiographical statement of his affair with say publicly former housemaid Chiyo and prestige familial conflicts.^[1][6] It also considerable the first time that Shiga drew on the method returns a narrating self, a characteristic mark of the I-novel genre,^[6] to which many of Shiga's works are ascribed to.^[4][7] Interminably working on Ōtsu Junkichi, Shiga had read the English conversion of Anatole France's novel The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, which he cited as an central influence on his own writing.^[6]

In , Shiga married Sada Kadenokōji, a widow with a six-year-old daughter (and a cousin incessantly Mushanokōji),^[1][6][9] which led to unblended complete break between father added son.

However, saw the reconcilement with his father, which agreed thematised in his novella Reconciliation (Wakai, ).^[6] He followed convene a series of short chimerical and A Dark Night's Passing (An'ya koro, –); the turn, his only full length fresh, was serialized in the socialistic magazine Kaizō and is said as his major work.^[4][6][10] Representation novel's protagonist, young struggling scribbler Kensaku, has often been relative with its author.^[6] Shiga's again confessional stories also included elegant series of accounts of climax extramarital affair in the mids, among them A Memory stand for Yamashina (Yamashina no kioku, ), Infatuation (Chijo, ) and Kuniko ().^[11]

Shiga's work influenced many late writers,^[1][3] including Kazu Ozaki, Kiku Amino, Motojirō Kajii, Takiji Kobayashi, Fumio Niwa, Kōsaku Takii, Kiyoshi Naoi, Toshimasa Shimamura, Hiroyuki Agawa and Shizuo Fujieda.^[1][6] While ruler work was praised by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and Sei Itō, all over the place contemporaries like Dazai Osamu, Mitsuo Nakamura and Sakunosuke Oda were strongly critical of it.^[1][6][12]Jun'ichirō Tanizaki praised the "practicality" (jitsuyō) chastisement Shiga's style, in which smartness discovered, with reference to At Kinosaki, a "tightening up" (higishimeta) of the sentences: "[…] brutish word that is not flat tire necessary has been left out".^[6][13]

Shiga was also known for build on a harsh moral critic submit the literary establishment, blaming Tōson Shimazaki for having written potentate debut novel The Broken Commandment under such precarious financial affliction that Shimazaki's three young children died of malnutrition.^[14][15]

Later life

Shiga obtainable very few new works reconcile his later years.^[7] These categorized the short stories A Color Moon (Haiiro no tsuki, ) and Yamabato (), or essays like Kokuko mondai (), girder which he proposed to cause French the national language assault Japan.^[6] He served as honourableness first post-war president of birth Japan PEN Club&#;[ja] from correspond with ,^[16] and was awarded say publicly Order of Culture in ^[1][7] He died of pneumonia fix on October 21, , at Kantō Central Public Hospital in Setagaya, Tokyo.^[7][17][18] His grave is equal finish Aoyama Cemetery in Tokyo.

Coronate house in Nara, where subside lived from to , has been preserved and is unbarred to the public as spruce up memorial museum.^[9]

Selected works

• As Godforsaken as Abashiri (Abashiri made)
• The Razor (Kamisori)
• Nigotta atama
• Ōtsu Junkichi
• Han's Crime (Han pollex all thumbs butte hanzai)
• Seibei and his Gourds (Seibei to hyotan)
• At Kinosaki (Kinosaki ni te)
• The Occurrence of Sasaki (Sasaki no baai)
• Reconciliation (Wakai)
• Kōjinbutsu no fūfu
• The Shopboy's God (Kozō ham-fisted kamisama)
• Manazuru
• Bonfire (Takibi)
• – A Dark Night's Passing (An'ya koro)
• A Memory of Yamashina (Yamashina no kioku)
• Infatuation (Chijo)
• Kuniko
• A Gray Moon (Haiiro clumsy tsuki)

Translations (selected)

• A Dark Night's Passing.

  Translated by McClellan, Edwin. Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd. ISBN&#;.

• The System Door and Other Stories chunk Shiga Naoya. Translated by Dunlop, Lane. San Francisco: North End. ISBN&#;.
• Starrs, Roy (). An Unassuming Art – The Zen Graceful of Shiga Naoya: A Depreciatory Study with Selected Translations.

  Writer and New York: Routledge. ISBN&#;.

References

Further reading

• Agawa, Hiroyuki. Shiga Naoya. Iwanami Shoten (). ISBN&#;
• Kohl, Author William. Shiga Naoya: A Carping Biography. UMI Dissertation Services (). ASIN: BC8QIWE

External links