Mori Ogai

Mori Ogai (mō`rē ō`gäē), 1862–1922, Japanese army physician, medical researcher, literary critic, novelist, translator, scholar, and playwright, he is now primarily remembered for his fiction. After an early flurry of literary activity, Ogai concentrated on his medical career with the Japanese army, but upon his retirement, turned to writing fiction full time. Ogai played a leading role in the Japanese romantic literary movement, taking a stand against naturalism incorporating elements from Japanese, Chinese, and western civilization. His later works, fictionalized accounts of historical incidents and personages, stressed the virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice.

Bibliography

See study by R. J. Bowring (1979).

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Mori Ogai 

(pseudonym of Mori Rintaro). Born Jan. 19, 1862, in Shimane Prefecture, Honshu; died July 9, 1922. Japanese writer, critic, and translator.

Mori studied in Germany from 1884 to 1888; he became a military doctor. He was the first to acquaint Japanese readers with German literature. His first works were published in 1889 (the collection of translated verse Images of the Past). Mori was a writer of romantic prose, for example, his novel The Dancing Girl (1890). Naturalistic elements are dominant in his Vita Sexualis (1909), Youth (1910), and The Wild Goose (1913). Mori was the author of the historical novellas The Last Letter of Okitsu Yagoemon (1912) and The Abe Family (1913).

WORKS

In Russian translation:
“Odnazhdy v lodke.” Vostochnyi aVmanakh, 1961, fasc. 4.

REFERENCES

Istoriia sovremennoi iaponskoi literatury. Moscow, 1961.
Grigor’eva, T., and V. Logunova. laponskaia literatura. Moscow, 1964.
Konrad, N. Ocherki iaponskoi literatury. Moscow, 1973.