Blog
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In Chapter Three, Jibun attends an alumni reunion, where he is offended by some of the mildly off-colour gossip shared by his former classmates. His beloved Tsuru is not far from his thoughts at any time, an object of absolute purity. I have borrowed an anonymous erotic artwork from late in the Meiji era (1868-1912), Read more
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In my previous post, I referred to Jibun’s description of two women outside Maruzen bookstore as having “a round face, in a flowery kimono, heavily powdered,” assuming them “naturally” to be geisha. His casual observation raises an intriguing issue about the perception of physical beauty across cultures, which will afford us a diversion touching on Read more
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Driving through the streets of Fitzroy at night you become obsessed with streetlight and the sound of an imagined disturbance occurring in flat thirteen on the twenty-fifth floor of the Brunswick St. commission flats. In daylight, there is little to see but a urine stain on a tram shelter seat. An old stiff with a Read more
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Author Saneatsu Mushanokoji (1885-1976) was one of the first great Japanese modernist writers. He may lay claim to have founded the I-novel (shishosetsu), a specifically Japanese confessional genre in which the author speaks directly and colloquially to the reader (e.g., Lippit 28). Mushanokoji was also a painter of still lifes, a poet and playwright, and Read more
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The Innocent marks the first complete English translation of Saneatsu Mushanokoji’s Omedetaki Hito (1911), often referred to as The Good-Natured Person. This celebrated novella explores identity and self-cultivation during the late Meiji period (1868 –1912), a time when Japan opened up to Western influences in art, culture, and thought. As a quintessential I-novel, it captures Read more
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