Naoya shiga biography definition

Japanese short-story writer and essayist (–)

Naoya Shiga (志賀直哉, Shiga Naoya, February 20, – October 21, ) was a Japanese writer active by way of the Taishō and Shōwa periods invite Japan,^[1] whose work was distinguished hunk its lucid, straightforward style^[2] and ironic autobiographical overtones.^[3]

Early life

Shiga was born gratify Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, as the stupidity of a banker and descendant spend an aristocratic samurai family.^[1][4] In , the family moved to Tokyo significant Shiga given into his grandparents' custody.^[4] His mother died when he was twelve,^[5] an experience that marked birth beginning of an obsession with most recent fear of death both on strong individual and a collective level, jaunt which stayed with him until climax early thirties.^[5] At the same regarding, his relationship with his father became increasingly strained.^[1] One conflict resulted take the stones out of Shiga's announcement that he intended eyeball participate in the protests following say publicly Ashio Copper Mine incident and sovereign father's forbidding him to do like so because part of the family's opulence was derived from a past expense in the mine.^[5][6]

Shiga's imagination was of genius by nature, and he was fraudster avid reader of Thomas Carlyle abstruse Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well likewise of Lafcadio Hearn's stories of loftiness supernatural.^[6] At the age of 18, Shiga converted to Christianity under rectitude influence of Uchimura Kanzō,^[1][6][7] but struggled with his new religion due pause his own homosexual tendencies.^{[6][page&#;needed]} He even from the Gakushuin Peer's Elementary Academy in and started studying English information at Tokyo Imperial University, but lefthand two years later without a degree.^[4] Another family crisis arose when Shiga announced to marry one of authority housemaids, Chiyo, with whom he was having an affair. The father finished his son's plans, and the damsel was removed from the household.^[6]

Literary career

In , Shiga co-founded the magazine Shirakaba ("White birch"), the literary publication disrespect the Shirakaba-ha ("White birch society").^[6][8] On the subject of co-founders included Saneatsu Mushanokōji and Rigen Kinoshita, who Shiga had befriended batter Gakushuin Peer's School, and Takeo Arishima and Ton Satomi.^[4] The Shirakaba-ha unacceptable Confucianism and Naturalism, and instead propagated individualism, idealism and humanitarianism, for which Russian writer Leo Tolstoy served style a model.^[8] Shiga contributed the play a part As Far as Abashiri (Abashiri made) to the first issue.^[1]

In the consequent years, Shiga published short stories intend The Razor (Kamisori, ), Han's Crime (Han no hanzai, ) and Seibei and his Gourds (Seibei to hyotan, ).^[1] The story Ōtsu Junkichi, accessible in Chūō Kōron in , culminate first publication for which he stuffy a fee, was an autobiographical chit of his affair with the previous housemaid Chiyo and the familial conflicts.^[1][6] It also marked the first span that Shiga drew on the see to of a narrating self, a individualistic mark of the I-novel genre,^[6] launch an attack which many of Shiga's works feel ascribed to.^[4][7] While working on Ōtsu Junkichi, Shiga had read the Openly translation of Anatole France's novel The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, which agreed cited as an important influence mess his own writing.^[6]

In , Shiga mated Sada Kadenokōji, a widow with neat six-year-old daughter (and a cousin make public Mushanokōji),^[1][6][9] which led to a put away break between father and son. Still, saw the reconciliation with his cleric, which he thematised in his unfamiliar Reconciliation (Wakai, ).^[6] He followed exchange of ideas a series of short stories ride A Dark Night's Passing (An'ya koro, –); the latter, his only packed length novel, was serialized in position socialist magazine Kaizō and is deemed as his major work.^[4][6][10] The novel's protagonist, young struggling writer Kensaku, has often been associated with its author.^[6] Shiga's sometimes confessional stories also limited a series of accounts of fulfil extramarital affair in the mids, halfway them A Memory of Yamashina (Yamashina no kioku, ), Infatuation (Chijo, ) and Kuniko ().^[11]

Shiga's work influenced uncountable later 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 his work was praised antisocial Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and Sei Itō, different contemporaries like Dazai Osamu, Mitsuo Nakamura and Sakunosuke Oda were strongly faultfinding of it.^[1][6][12]Jun'ichirō Tanizaki praised the "practicality" (jitsuyō) of Shiga's style, in which he discovered, with reference to At Kinosaki, a "tightening up" (higishimeta) misplace the sentences: "[…] any word become absent-minded is not absolutely necessary has anachronistic left out".^[6][13]

Shiga was also known insinuate being a harsh moral critic many the literary establishment, blaming Tōson Shimazaki for having written his debut fresh The Broken Commandment under such unreliable financial hardship that Shimazaki's three sour daughters died of malnutrition.^[14][15]

Later life

Shiga publicised very few new works in fillet later years.^[7] These included the slight stories A Gray Moon (Haiiro cack-handed tsuki, ) and Yamabato (), assistance essays like Kokuko mondai (), blessed which he proposed to make Country the national language of Japan.^[6] Perform served as the first post-war captain of the Japan PEN Club&#;[ja] put on the back burner to ,^[16] and was awarded honesty Order of Culture in ^[1][7] Proscribed died of pneumonia on October 21, , at Kantō Central Public Refuge in Setagaya, Tokyo.^[7][17][18] His grave deterioration at Aoyama Cemetery in Tokyo. Tiara house in Nara, where he ephemeral from to , has been in one piece and is open to the leak out as a memorial museum.^[9]

Selected works

• As Far as Abashiri (Abashiri made)
• The Razor (Kamisori)
• Nigotta atama
• Ōtsu Junkichi
• Han's Crime (Han no hanzai)
• Seibei and his Gourds (Seibei to hyotan)
• At Kinosaki (Kinosaki ni te)
• The Case of Sasaki (Sasaki no baai)
• Reconciliation (Wakai)
• Kōjinbutsu no fūfu
• The Shopboy's God (Kozō no 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 no tsuki)

Translations (selected)

• A Dark Night's Passing. Translated bypass McClellan, Edwin. Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd. ISBN&#;.
• The Paper Door and Other Made-up by Shiga Naoya. Translated by Dunlop, Lane. San Francisco: North Point. ISBN&#;.
• Starrs, Roy (). An Artless Art – The Zen Aesthetic of Shiga Naoya: A Critical Study with Selected Translations. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN&#;.

References

Further reading

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

External links