MORI OGAI

born Feb. 17, 1862, Tsuwano, Japan died July 9, 1922, Tokyo pseudonym of Mori Rintaro one of the creators of modern Japanese literature. The son of a physician of the aristocratic warrior (samurai) class, Mori Ogai studied medicine, at first in Tokyo and from 1884 to 1888 in Germany. In 1890 he published the story Maihime (The Dancing Girl), an account closely based on his own experience of an unhappy attachment between a German girl and a Japanese student in Berlin. It represented a marked departure from the impersonal fiction of preceding generations and initiated a vogue for autobiographical revelations among Japanese writers. Ogai's most popular novel, Gan (191113; part translation: The Wild Goose), is the story of the undeclared love of a moneylender's mistress for a medical student who passes by her house each day. Ogai also translated Hans Christian Andersen's autobiographical novel Improvisatoren. In 1912 Ogai was profoundly moved by the suicide of General Nogi Maresuke, following the death of the emperor Meiji, and he abandoned fiction in favour of historical works depicting the samurai code. The heroes of several works are warriors who, like General Nogi, commit suicide in order to follow their masters to the grave. Despite his early confessional writings, Ogai came to share with his samurai heroes a reluctance to dwell on emotions. His detachment made his later works seem cold, but their strength and integrity were strikingly close to the samurai ideals he so admired.