Mori Ōgai, “The Grouch” – A Kanshi (Sino-Japanese Poem) about Paintings for Sale in a Modern Department Store

Abstract

Abstract Mori Ōgai 森鷗外 (1862–1922) stands at the fountainhead of modern Japanese literature. He is most famous for his prose writings: the groundbreaking short story, Maihime 舞姬 (The Danseuse); the full-length novel, Gan 雁 (The Wild Goose); and a half-dozen lengthy historical biographies. Much of Ōgai’s most creative writing is found in his translations. In Sokkyō shijin 即興詩人, Hans Christian Andersen’s The Improvisatore is transformed into mesmerizing quasi-classical Japanese. Fausuto ファウスト, written in a pithy Japanese vernacular full of wit, provides the first full-length translation of the Goethe classic. And his renderings of plays by Ibsen and Strindberg stand at the forefront of modern Japanese theatre. Mori Ōgai’s Sino-Japanese poems are especially important. They are revealing in biographical terms, the better to understand Ōgai (the person, the author, the public figure); in historical terms, to comprehend better the era in which he wrote, as well as how he experienced it and perceived earlier periods; and in literary terms, the better to appreciate his achievement as a writer. The selection presented here is revelatory on all three counts. One should keep in mind that, by writing in classical Chinese, Ōgai was not only participating in a centuries-long tradition in Japan. He was also “enacting civilization”, as it were, by writing in the pan-East Asian idiom that anyone educated was assumed to know. By the time the following poem was written, such a view had become quite conservative, if not reactionary.