MARC Record from marc_columbia

LEADER: 03749mam a22004458a 4500
001 1486751
005 20220602044605.0
008 930519s1994 cau 000 1 eng
010 $a 93024945
020 $a0804722595 :$c$32.50
020 $a0804722609 (pbk.) :$c$16.95
035 $a(OCoLC)ocm28212365
035 $9AJB5733CU
035 $a1486751
040 $aDLC$cDLC$dOBE
041 1 $aeng$hjpn
082 00 $a895.6/342$220
100 1 $aNagai, Kafū,$d1879-1959.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n81048220
240 10 $aTsuyu no atosaki.$lEnglish
245 10 $aDuring the rains & Flowers in the shade :$btwo novellas /$cby Nagai Kafu ; translated by Lane Dunlop.
260 $aStanford, Calif. :$bStanford University Press,$c1994.
300 $axviii, 223 pages ;$c22 cm
336 $atext$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$2rdamedia
338 $avolume$2rdacarrier
520 $aNagai Kafu was one of the most important Japanese writers of fiction during the first half of the twentieth century. He is best known for his evocative descriptions of the moods and fancies of Tokyo: its gardens and canals, its streets and alleys, its people, and above all its women - especially the kept women, geisha, and prostitutes.
520 8 $aDuring the Rains and Flowers in the Shade, which appear here in English for the first time, are set in the Tokyo of the 1930's. Most of the seedy neighborhoods that Kafu so lovingly describes have long since vanished, either in the bombing raids of 1945 or in the rebuilding that followed. Kafu's sympathies are clearly with the women that figure in these stories.
520 8 $aA man wedded to the past, happy only in retrospect, Kafu saw in the world of the demimondaine the last tattered vestiges of the old Tokyo, when it was called Edo. He also saw in their day-to-day life the only honest way to live, the love with the least falsehood, in a materialistic, hypocritical society.
520 8 $a.
520 8 $aDuring the Rains (1931) is the story of the vicissitudes of an amiable and lascivious Ginza cafe girl. It is considered to be among Kafu's masterpieces by many writers, critics, and scholars, including Donald Keene: "One of Kafu's finest achievements....The exceptional praise that During the Rains won from discriminating critics was occasioned chiefly by the novelistic interest.
520 8 $aThe detached analysis of a group of people makes the story read like a work of French Naturalism, though a few passages...evoke the beauty of place and season in the typical Kafu manner.".
520 8 $aFlowers in the Shade might almost be called a continuation of During the Rains. Its hero, kept by a wealthy woman in his student days, ends up in his forties being supported by a prostitute. Donald Keene says that Kafu "makes us see and all but smell the dingy rooms he describes, without ever allowing us to pass judgment on them or their inhabitants.
520 8 $aKafu neither approves or disapproves of his characters, and if he tells us in detail about their past it is not in order to demonstrate how environment and heredity have determined their lives...but to assuage our curiosity as to how Jukichi came to live off women, how a particular woman happened to become a prostitute or a procuress, and so on." The present volume contains a Preface by the translator that briefly summarizes Kafu's life and career.
600 10 $aNagai, Kafū,$d1879-1959$vTranslations into English.
700 12 $aNagai, Kafū,$d1879-1959.$tHikage no hana.$lEnglish.
740 0 $aDuring the rains.
740 0 $aFlowers in the shade.
740 0 $aDuring the rains and Flowers in the shade.
852 00 $bbar$hPL812.A4$iT7513 1994g
852 00 $beal$hPL812.A4$iT7513 1994g