Nagai kafu biography of donald

  • Half the book is biography, the other translations of Kafu's work, which has been abundantly translated since this book was published.
  • Born December 3, , in Tokyo, Japan; died of a hemorrhaging stomach ulcer, April 10, , in Ichikawa, Japan; son of Kyuichiro (poet "Kagen," government.
  • Kafu Nagai, an extremely popular writer, refused to publish a single work during the war, but in his diary (later published) he expressed his.

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    So Lovely a Country Will Never Perish: Wartime Diaries of Japanese Writers

    August 8,
    stars (/10). This book is so packed full of information and seeds of more information that, even though it took me several months to go through, I think I will go back to it and re-read it at some point in the not-too-distant future.
    "So Lovely a Country Will Never Perish" was not what I expected it to be. I thought it would contain mainly excerpts of the diaries of Japanese writers, and that as a reader I'd be left to my own devices and given a free reign in drawing my own conclusions based on what the diarists wrote. The excerpts are indeed there, but they are somewhat secondary to the author's commentary, as if he is making a statement and using some quotes from here and there to substantiate it. This is how I felt reading the first half of the book. The overall perspective is made even more intriguing, and complicated, by the fact that the author himself was in an interpreter for the American

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    Nagai, Kafu –

    (Nagai Kafū, Sokichi Nagai)

    PERSONAL:

    Born December 3, , in Tokyo, Japan; died of a hemorrhaging stomach ulcer, April 10, , in Ichikawa, Japan; son of Kyuichiro (poet "Kagen," government official, and executive) and Tsune (daughter of Washizu Kido, a Confucian ethics scholar) Nagai; married wife, Yone, September, (divorced, ); married wife, Yaeji (a geisha), (divorced). Education: Attended Gyosei Gakko, Kalamazoo College, and Princeton University.

    CAREER:

    Apprentice playwright, ; correspondent, Yamato Shinbun, ; trainee, Yokohama Specie Bank, New York, färsk, , Lyon branch, ; writer in Japan, beginning ; professor of French literature, Keio University, ; publisher of Mita Bungaku, beginning ; publisher of Bunmei and Kagetsu, beginning Military service: Worked in Japanese Legation Office, Washington, DC, during Russo-Japanese War.

    MEMBER:

    Japanese Academy of Arts.

    AWARDS, HONORS:

    Imperial Cultural Medal; Bunka Kunsho (Order of Culture),

    WRITINGS:

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    Today, long awaited second volume of Donald Keene&#;s Japanese Diaries has arrived. Eagerly, I opened the package and immediately turned to the book&#;s last essay, on Nagai Kafu.

    Perhaps Donald Keene is not a profound reader of Kafu; or perhaps the diaries of Kafu which he has chosen to discuss are by a different Kafu from the Kafu I know. This Kafu here is the young Kafu of his diaries from his trip to America and France and the early days after his return to Japan (roughly ). This Kafu here reminds me of many people I have known, not just Asians, who have traveled abroad, licked a little of the life there, and returned home to hate everything they now found on their return. Kafu&#;s comments on these experiences are typical of the sort: their understanding of the wonderful abroad is poor, often wrong; the analysis to which they then submit their own country is seen through a faulty lense, and therefore also usually wrong.

    Voltaire&#;s story is emblematic: upon see

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