was a Japanese writer active during the Taishō and Shōwa periods of Japan, whose work was distinguished by its lucid, straightforward style and strong autobiographical overtones.

Early life

Shiga was born in

Ishinomaki is a city located in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. , the city has an estimated population of 138,538, and a population density of 250 persons per km2 in 61,919 households. The total area of the city is . Geography Ishinomaki is in northeastern Miy ...

Miyagi Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Tōhoku region of Honshu. Miyagi Prefecture has a population of 2,305,596 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of . Miyagi Prefecture borders Iwate Prefecture to the north, Akita Prefecture to the n ...

, as the son of a banker and descendant of an aristocratic

samurai were the hereditary military nobility and officer caste of History of Japan#Medieval Japan (1185–1573/1600), medieval and Edo period, early-modern Japan from the late 12th century until their abolition in 1876. They were the well-paid retai ...

family. In 1885, the family moved to

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

and Shiga given into his grandparents' custody. His mother died when he was twelve, an experience that marked the beginning of an obsession with and fear of death both on an individual and a collective level, and which stayed with him until his early thirties. At the same time, his relationship with his father became increasingly strained. One conflict resulted from Shiga's announcement to participate in the protests following the 1907 and his father's forbidding him to do so, as part of the family's wealth was owed to a past investment in the mine. Shiga's imagination was inspired by nature, and he was an avid reader of

Thomas Carlyle Thomas Carlyle (4 December 17955 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher. A leading writer of the Victorian era, he exerted a profound influence on 19th-century art, literature and philosophy. Born in Ecclefechan, ...

and

Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a cham ...

, as well as of Lafcadio Hearn's stories of the supernatural. At the age of 18, Shiga converted to Christianity under the influence of Uchimura Kanzō, but struggled with his new religion due to his own homosexual tendencies. He graduated from the Gakushuin Peer's Elementary School in 1906 and started studying English literature at

Tokyo Imperial University , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project by ...

, but left two years later without a degree. Another family crisis arose when Shiga announced to marry one of the housemaids, Chiyo, with whom he was having an affair. The father terminated his son's plans, and the maid was removed from the household.

Literary career

In 1910, Shiga co-founded the magazine '' Shirakaba'' ("White birch"), the literary publication of the

Shirakaba-ha The was an influential Japanese literary coterie, which published the literary magazine ''Shirakaba'', from 1910 to 1923. History In 1910, a loose association of alumni of the prestigious Gakushuin Peer’s School in Tokyo began a literary soc ...

("White birch society"). Other co-founders included Saneatsu Mushanokōji and Rigen Kinoshita, who Shiga had befriended at Gakushuin Peer's School, and Takeo Arishima and

Ton Satomi Ton is the name of any one of several units of measure. It has a long history and has acquired several meanings and uses. Mainly it describes units of weight. Confusion can arise because ''ton'' can mean * the long ton, which is 2,240 pounds ...

. The Shirakaba-ha rejected

Confucianism Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China. Variously described as tradition, a philosophy, a religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, a way of governing, or ...

and Naturalism, and instead propagated

individualism Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology and social outlook that emphasizes the intrinsic worth of the individual. Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and to value independence and self-relia ...

idealism In philosophy, the term idealism identifies and describes metaphysics, metaphysical perspectives which assert that reality is indistinguishable and inseparable from perception and understanding; that reality is a mental construct closely con ...

and

humanitarianism Humanitarianism is an active belief in the value of human life, whereby humans practice benevolent treatment and provide assistance to other humans to reduce suffering and improve the conditions of humanity for moral, altruistic, and emotiona ...

, for which Russian writer

Leo Tolstoy Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...

served as a model. Shiga contributed the story ''As Far as Abashiri'' (''Abashiri made'') to the first issue. In the following years, Shiga published short stories like ''The Razor'' (''Kamisori'', 1910), '' Han's Crime'' (''Han no hanzai'', 1913) and ''Seibei and his Gourds'' (''Seibei to hyotan'', 1913). The story ''Ōtsu Junkichi'', published in ''

Chūō Kōron is a monthly Japanese literary magazine (), first established during the Meiji period and continuing to this day. It is published by its namesake-bearing Chūōkōron Shinsha (formerly Chūōkōron-sha). The headquarters is in Tokyo. ''Chūō ...

'' in 1912, his first publication for which he received a fee, was an autobiographical account of his affair with the former housemaid Chiyo and the familial conflicts. It also marked the first time that Shiga drew on the method of a narrating self, a distinctive mark of the I-novel genre, to which many of Shiga's works are ascribed to. While working on ''Ōtsu Junkichi'', Shiga had read the English translation of

Anatole France (; born , ; 16 April 1844 – 12 October 1924) was a French poet, journalist, and novelist with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters. He was a member of the Académie Franç ...

's novel ''

The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard ''The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard'' (french: Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard) is the first novel by Anatole France, published in 1881. With this work, one of his first written entirely in prose, he made himself known as a novelist; he had been primar ...

'', which he cited as an important influence on his own writing. In 1914, Shiga married Sada Kadenokōji, a widow with a six-year-old daughter (and a cousin of Mushanokōji), which led to a complete break between father and son. However, 1917 saw the reconciliation with his father, which he thematised in his novella ''Reconciliation'' (''Wakai'', 1917). He followed with a series of short stories and '' A Dark Night's Passing'' (''An'ya koro'', 1921–1937); the latter, his only full length novel, was serialized in the socialist magazine '' Kaizō'' and is regarded as his major work. The novel's protagonist, young struggling writer Kensaku, has often been associated with its author. Shiga's sometimes confessional stories also included a series of accounts of his extramarital affair in the mid-1920s, among them ''A Memory of Yamashina'' (''Yamashina no kioku'', 1926), ''Infatuation'' (''Chijo'', 1926) and ''Kuniko'' (1927). Shiga's work influenced many later writers, including Kazu Ozaki,

Kiku Amino was a Japanese writer and translator of English and Russian literature. She was a recipient of the Women's Literature Prize, the Yomiuri Prize, and Japan Academy of the Arts prize. Biography Amino was born in Azabu Mamiana-cho and raised in Ak ...

, Motojirō Kajii, Takiji Kobayashi,

Fumio Niwa was a Japanese novelist with a long list of works, the most famous in the West being his novel ''The Buddha Tree'' (Japanese ''Bodaiju'', "The Linden", or "The Bodhi Tree", 1956). He was ordained as a Shin Buddhist priest in his youth, but aba ...

, Kōsaku Takii, Kiyoshi Naoi, Toshimasa Shimamura, Hiroyuki Agawa and Shizuo Fujieda. While his work was praised by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and Sei Itō, other contemporaries like Dazai Osamu, Mitsuo Nakamura and Sakunosuke Oda were strongly critical of it.

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki was a Japanese author who is considered to be one of the most prominent figures in modern Japanese literature. The tone and subject matter of his work ranges from shocking depictions of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions to subtle port ...

praised the "practicality" (jitsuyō) of Shiga's style, in which he discovered, with reference to ''At Kinosaki'', a "tightening up" (higishimeta) of the sentences: " ��any word that is not absolutely necessary has been left out". Shiga was also known for being a harsh moral critic of the literary establishment, blaming Tōson Shimazaki for having written his debut novel ''

The Broken Commandment ''The Broken Commandment'' is a Japanese novel written by Tōson Shimazaki published in 1906 (late Meiji period) under the title ''Hakai'' (破戒). The novel deals with the '' burakumin'', formerly known as ''eta''. This book enjoyed great popu ...

'' under such precarious financial hardship that Shimazaki's three young daughters died of malnutrition.

Later life

Shiga published very few new works in his later years. These included the short stories ''A Gray Moon'' (''Haiiro no tsuki'', 1946) and ''Yamabato'' (1951), or essays like ''Kokuko mondai'' (1946), in which he proposed to make French the national language of Japan. He served as the first post-war president of the from 1947 to 1948, and was awarded the

Order of Culture The is a Japanese order, established on February 11, 1937. The order has one class only, and may be awarded to men and women for contributions to Japan's art, literature, science, technology, or anything related to culture in general; recipient ...

in 1949. He died of

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severi ...

on October 21, 1971 at Kantō Central Public Hospital in

Setagaya, Tokyo is a special ward in Tokyo, Japan. It is also the name of a neighborhood and administrative district within the ward. The ward calls itself Setagaya City in English. Its official bird is the azure-winged magpie, its flower is the fringed orc ...

. His grave is at Aoyama Cemetery in Tokyo. His house in

Nara The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an " independent federal agency of the United States government within the executive branch", charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It ...

, where he lived from 1929 to 1938, has been preserved and is open to the public as a memorial museum.

Selected works

* 1910: ''As Far as Abashiri'' (''Abashiri made'') * 1910: ''The Razor'' (''Kamisori'') * 1911: ''Nigotta atama'' * 1912: ''Ōtsu Junkichi'' * 1913: '' Han's Crime'' (''Han no hanzai'') * 1913: ''Seibei and his Gourds'' (''Seibei to hyotan'') * 1917: ''At Kinosaki'' (''Kinosaki ni te'') * 1917: ''The Case of Sasaki'' (''Sasaki no baai'') * 1917: ''Reconciliation'' (''Wakai'') * 1917: ''Kōjinbutsu no fūfu'' * 1920: ''The Shopboy's God'' (''Kozō no kamisama'') * 1920: ''Manazuru'' * 1920: ''Bonfire'' (''Takibi'') * 1921–1937: '' A Dark Night's Passing'' (''An'ya koro'') * 1926: ''A Memory of Yamashina'' (''Yamashina no kioku'') * 1926: ''Infatuation'' (''Chijo'') * 1927: ''Kuniko'' * 1946: ''A Gray Moon'' (''Haiiro no tsuki'')

Translations (selected)

* * *

References

External links

National Diet Library biographyProminent people of Minato CityJ'Lit , Authors : Naoya Shiga , Books from Japan
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shiga, Naoya 1883 births 1971 deaths 20th-century Japanese male writers 20th-century Japanese novelists 20th-century Japanese short story writers Japanese former Christians Japanese male short story writers Persons of Cultural Merit People from Ishinomaki Recipients of the Order of Culture Shirakaba-ha University of Tokyo alumni Writers from Miyagi Prefecture Japanese magazine founders