The Dancing Girl by Mori Ogai

After recently reading Gan I've been keen to return to Mori Ogai, one of Mori's tampen, The Dancing Girl/Maihime is a fascinating story that must count as being one of the first modern Japanese fictions set outside of the country. Set in the late 1880's, the story first appeared in 1890, opening with various brief recollections of his journey to and from Berlin, Ota Toyotaro goes further back with his recollections and recounts the path of his life, his father passing away, achieving a degree in Law at an early age, also learning French and German. After being sent to Berlin for further studies he notices with some relief that he is able to escape from the rather petty remonstartions of the head of his department. He walks Berlin through the Tiergarten and Unter den Linden, there's a sense that with his move to Berlin Toyotaro has gone through a subtle transformation of character, through shifting continents he himself has been through a subtle transformation of spirit, keeping aloof from his fellow countrymen in Berlin he is viewed with derision and suspicion by them and falls victim to slander, eventually loosing his post. At an old church at Klosterstrasse he comes across a sobbing girl, describing the girl's appearance he concedes; 'that only a poet could do her justice', through acknowledging that he is a stranger to the area, he inquires what is the matter, and learns that her father had recently passed away and that her employer is trying to coerce her into marriage with the condition that he will pay off her family's debt, the girl's mother scolds her for refusing the proposal. He learns her name, Elsie, also that she's a dancing girl, at first they form a relationship of tutor and pupil and after helping her out of her financial problems takes up lodgings in her home. Through an intermediary in Japan he gets some work writing journalistic dispatches.

As the story progresses it becomes apparent that Toyotaro is a man caught between many emotions and allegiances, although not explictly expressed, he finds himself caught in an emotional displacement, the consequences of these forces that are pulling him though are irreverisble in the end for Elsie. The story is potted with refrences to German literature, through a reading of Hackländer Toyotaro learns that the dancing profession is secondary to that of  'the lowest trade'. The arrival of Aizawa, his intermediary, in Berlin, along with that of Count Amakata forces Toyotaro's fate to turn, through translation work for the Count which takes him to Russia, Toyotaro's experiences lead him through the poorest and also the most privilged echelons of society. Though brief, the panoramic vision of intercontinental life must have made revelatory reading for its Meiji era audience, one that still transports the reader today. Although the narrative is one from a personal perspective, it could also be read that Toyotaro's actions and relationship with Elsie represent a comment in microcosm on the sensibilities of the expanding Meiji conciousness and the beginnings of Japan's presence into the wider world, Mori's portrait of this though, rather than being one of celebration ends with a beleagured sense of resignation and dissolution. The story is translated by Richard Bowring and has appeared in the first volume of The Columbia Anthology of Japanese Literature, and also in Youth and Other Stories edited by J. Thomas Rimer.

The Dancing Girl/Maihime at Chikumashobo

Above picture Unter den Linden, 1890 by the Polish artist Anna Bilinska-Bohdanowicz via wikicommons.

The Wild Geese

As is often the case that after a period of reading relatively modern or contemporary books or novels the desire to turn to something older pounces on my reading habits, and vice a versa. Feburary 17th will mark the 150 anniversary of Mori Ogai's birth,  which seems like a great prompt to read some of his works, 2012 also marks the 100th anniversary of Soseki's Kokoro. Gan/The Wild Geese was written between the years 1911-1913, it could be described as being a long novella coming in at around 120 pages long, although it took longer to read than anticipated, theres plenty in here to inspire thought, like Kawabata Yasunari's later novel Koto/The Old Capital the novel is of interest with topographical descriptions of it's setting, here it's in and around Muenzaka near Tokyo University and Shinobazu Pond, this area is also the setting for Kawabata's short story from 1926 Boshi Jiken/The Hat Incident, which can be found in the collection, Palm-of-the-Hand-Stories. Biographical details on Mori are plenty throughout the internet, but a reading of a number of his fictions we can see that he  drew on experiences and episodes from his life to use in his writings, Mori lived and wrote during the Meiji period, and many of the changes that this epochal period caused are witnessed and reacted to by the characters in his books. Like Natsume Soseki, his writing is seen as being anti-naturalist in it's perspective, in Gan the narrative is dotted with asides which can be interpretated to this effect. The story is narrated by an anonymous acquaintance of a student called Okada, who the narrator notes reminds him of Kawakami Bizan, it could be said that the book has four or five distinctive narratives, the opening one introduces us to the two students and of Okada's first contact with Otama by seeing her in the window of a large house he walks by. In the second the story of the money lender Suezo is described, at first a servant to the students of the university, Suezo through being thrifty has also managed to amass a capital of money, and he is reviled in the neighbourhood as a money lender, the narrative set before Okada's  encounter with Otama traces Suezo's fascination and attraction to Otama, which eventually leads him to renting a house in Muenzaka for her as his mistress, and another one to accomodate her father. Mori's narrative moves in and out of the thoughts of his characters, Otama's as she misses  being with her father, Otama's father's thoughts about his daughter, then it passes to Suezo's wife, Otsune, who begins to suspect her husband after hearing rumours,  Otsune comes nearly to breaking point when Otama is pointed out to her in the street with the same parasol that Suezo had given her, confrontations abound. The narrative also following Suezo as he continually tries to put his wife off the scent, these psychological portraits are incredibly well defined insights into the worlds of the characters, Otama's loneliness and sense of entrapment in particular.

Throughout the novel the narratives of Mori's characters observe and note events and people occurring around them, the Namamugi incident is referred to and Suezo picks up on the idiosyncrasies of Fukuchi, the writer who owns a large house next to his - He was supposedly an intelligent man, a writer. But was he? If a clerk did the same kinds of nasty tricks with his pen as Fukuchi did, he would be discharged, reading a line like this makes you think that perhaps Mori had someone particular in mind.  Examples of the changes being brought in with the period can be read too - The wheeled stall vanished from it's set place under the eaves. And the house and it's surroundings, which were always modest, seemed suddenly attacked by what was then fashionably called "civilization",  for new boards over the ditch replaced the broken and warped ones, and a new lattice door had been installed at the entrance. This passage gives the impression that Mori is alluding that the changes that were underway went only as far as appearances, that in an understated way that  underneath things remained pretty much the same, the big changes were perhaps only skin deep. As the narrative progresses  Suezo  acting on a slight impulse buys Otama a pair of linnets which can read as being the first appearance of two metaphors used in the narrative, after Otama has hung the cage up in her house in Muenzaka, the narrative flows into focusing on Okada's perspective, coming to the rescue of the birds when the cage is attacked by a snake. Gan finishes with many threads left unresolved, it leaving it up to the reader to imagine the continuous lives of it's characters.

Gan has been translated into English twice, as The Wild Geese by Kingo Ochiai and Sanford Goldstein, published by Tuttle Publishing, and again by Burton Watson as The Wild Goose published by Center for Japanese Studies Publications, University of Michigan