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Light And Darkness (novel)
is the last novel by Natsume Sōseki. It was incomplete at the time of his death in 1916. It has been translated into English twice, by V. H. Viglielmo and by John Nathan. History ''Mei An'' was first published in daily serialized installments in the Tokyo and Osaka editions of the ''Asahi Shimbun'', beginning on May 16, 1916. It was the ninth and last of Sōseki's novels to be serialized by the newspaper. In a letter to the paper's editor, Sōseki explained that because of his illness — a combination of bleeding ulcers, intestinal catarrh, and hemorrhoids — he had begun work on the novel only a week before the serialization was scheduled to begin. He also remarked that he was able to complete nine installments before the serialization was published, a lead he managed to maintain until his death on December 9, 1916. The writing of the novel became increasingly problematic for Sōseki as his illness worsened over the year. On November 16, less than a month before his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Natsume Sōseki
, born , was a Japanese novelist. He is best known around the world for his novels ''Kokoro'', '' Botchan'', ''I Am a Cat'', '' Kusamakura'' and his unfinished work '' Light and Darkness''. He was also a scholar of British literature and writer of haiku, '' kanshi'', and fairy tales. From 1984 until 2004, his portrait appeared on the front of the Japanese 1,000 yen note. Early years Natsume Kin'nosuke was born on 9 February 1867 in the town of Babashita, Ushigome, Edo (present Kikui, Shinjuku, Tokyo), the fifth son of village head (''nanushi'') Natsume Kohē Naokatsu and his wife Chie. His father, a powerful and wealthy ''nanushi'', owned all land from Ushigome to Takadanobaba in Edo and handled most civil lawsuits at his doorstep. He was a descendant of Natsume Yoshinobu, a Sengoku period samurai and retainer of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Sōseki began his life as an unwanted child, born to his mother late in her life, forty years old and his father then fifty-three. When he was born, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Natori Shunsen
was a Japanese woodblock printer, considered by many to be the last master in the art of kabuki ''yakusha-e'' "actor pictures". Biography He was born Natori Yoshinosuke, the fifth son of a silk merchant, in Yamanashi Prefecture. His family settled in Tokyo shortly after his birth, where he remained until his death in 1960.Natori Shunsen (1886-1960) The Lavenberg Collection of Japanese Prints From the age of eleven he studied with traditional (Japanese-style) painter , and was given his artist's name "Shunsen". He subsequently studied at the Tokyo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Nathan
John Weil Nathan (born March 1940) is an American translator, writer, scholar, filmmaker, and Japanologist. His translations from Japanese into English include the works of Yukio Mishima, Kenzaburō Ōe, Kōbō Abe, and Natsume Sōseki. Nathan is also an Emmy Award-winning producer, writer and director of many films about Japanese culture and society and American business. He is Professor Emeritus of Japanese Cultural Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Early life Nathan was born in New York City and spent part of his childhood in Tucson, Arizona. He was born into a non-practicing Jewish family. His father was a painter, and his grandfather was a reporter at ''The Jewish Daily Forward''. In 1961, Nathan graduated from Harvard College, where he studied under Edwin O. Reischauer. Career The summer after graduation, he worked at Nomura Securities in New York. He moved to Japan directly after, teaching English as a second language to native Japanese speakers at a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japanese Language
is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as the Ainu, Austroasiatic, Koreanic, and the now-discredited Altaic, but none of these proposals has gained widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), there was a massive influx of Sino-Japanese vocabulary into the language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese. Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords. The basis of the standard dialect moved f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tokyo
Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 million residents ; the city proper has a population of 13.99 million people. Located at the head of Tokyo Bay, the prefecture forms part of the Kantō region on the central coast of Honshu, Japan's largest island. Tokyo serves as Japan's economic center and is the seat of both the Japanese government and the Emperor of Japan. Originally a fishing village named Edo, the city became politically prominent in 1603, when it became the seat of the Tokugawa shogunate. By the mid-18th century, Edo was one of the most populous cities in the world with a population of over one million people. Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the imperial capital in Kyoto was moved to Edo, which was renamed "Tokyo" (). Tokyo was devastate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Osaka
is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2.7 million in the 2020 census, it is also the largest component of the Keihanshin Metropolitan Area, which is the second-largest metropolitan area in Japan and the 10th largest urban area in the world with more than 19 million inhabitants. Osaka was traditionally considered Japan's economic hub. By the Kofun period (300–538) it had developed into an important regional port, and in the 7th and 8th centuries, it served briefly as the imperial capital. Osaka continued to flourish during the Edo period (1603–1867) and became known as a center of Japanese culture. Following the Meiji Restoration, Osaka greatly expanded in size and underwent rapid industrialization. In 1889, Osaka was officially established as a municipality. The construc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Asahi Shimbun
is one of the four largest newspapers in Japan. Founded in 1879, it is also one of the oldest newspapers in Japan and Asia, and is considered a newspaper of record for Japan. Its circulation, which was 4.57 million for its morning edition and 1.33 million for its evening edition as of July 2021, was second behind that of the ''Yomiuri Shimbun''. By print circulation, it is the third largest newspaper in the world behind the ''Yomiuri'', though its digital size trails that of many global newspapers including ''The New York Times''. Its publisher, is a media conglomerate with its registered headquarters in Osaka. It is a privately held family business with ownership and control remaining with the founding Murayama and Ueno families. According to the Reuters Institute Digital Report 2018, public trust in the ''Asahi Shimbun'' is the lowest among Japan's major dailies, though confidence is declining in all the major newspapers. The ''Asahi Shimbun'' is one of the five largest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iwanami Shoten
is a Japanese publishing company based in Tokyo.Louis Frédéric, ''Japan Encyclopedia'', Harvard University Press, 2005, p. 409. Iwanami Shoten was founded in 1913 by Iwanami Shigeo. Its first major publication was Natsume Sōseki's novel ''Kokoro'', which appeared as a book in 1914 after being serialized in the ''Asahi Shimbun''. Iwanami has since become known for scholarly publications, editions of classical Japanese literature, dictionaries, and high-quality paperbacks. Since 1955, it has published the ''Kōjien'', a single-volume dictionary of Japanese that is widely considered to be authoritative. Iwanami's head office is at Hitotsubashi 2–5–5, Chiyoda, Tokyo. Company history Iwanami Shigeo founded the publishing firm Iwanami Shoten in the Kanda district of Tokyo in 1913. In its early years, the company published authors such as Natsume Sōseki, Kurata Hyakuzō and Abe Jiro. It also published academic and literary journals in the field of philosophy, includi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
I Am A Cat
is a satirical novel written in 1905–1906 by Natsume Sōseki about Japanese society during the Meiji period (1868–1912), particularly the uneasy mix of Western culture and Japanese traditions. Sōseki's title, ''Wagahai wa Neko de Aru'', uses a very high-register phrasing more appropriate to a nobleman, conveying grandiloquence and self-importance. This is somewhat ironic, since the speaker, an anthropomorphized domestic cat, is a regular house cat of a teacher, and not of a high-ranking noble as the manner of speech suggests, an example of Sōseki's love for droll writing. The book was first published in ten installments in the literary journal '' Hototogisu''. At first, Sōseki intended only to write the short story that constitutes the first chapter of ''I Am a Cat''. However, Takahama Kyoshi, one of the editors of ''Hototogisu'', persuaded Sōseki to serialize the work, which evolved stylistically as the installments progressed. Nearly all the chapters can stand alone a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Onsen
In Japan, are the country's hot springs and the bathing facilities and traditional inns around them. As a volcanically active country, Japan has many onsens scattered throughout all of its major islands. There are approximately 25,000 hot spring sources throughout Japan that provide hot mineral water to about 3,000 genuine onsen establishments. Onsens come in many types and shapes, including and . Baths may be either publicly run by a municipality or privately, often as part of a hotel, ''ryokan'', or . The presence of an onsen is often indicated on signs and maps by the symbol ♨ or the kanji (''yu'', meaning "hot water"). Sometimes the simpler hiragana character ゆ (''yu''), understandable to younger children, is used. Traditionally, onsens were located outdoors, although many inns have now built indoor bathing facilities as well. Nowadays, as most households have their own bath, the number of traditional public baths has decreased, but the number of sightseeing ho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1916 Novels
Events Below, the events of the First World War have the "WWI" prefix. January * January 1 – The British Empire, British Royal Army Medical Corps carries out the first successful blood transfusion, using blood that had been stored and cooled. * January 9 – WWI: Gallipoli Campaign: The last British troops are evacuated from Gallipoli, as the Ottoman Empire prevails over a joint British and French operation to capture Constantinople. * January 10 – WWI: Erzurum Offensive: Russia defeats the Ottoman Empire. * January 12 – The Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony, part of the British Empire, is established in present-day Tuvalu and Kiribati. * January 13 – WWI: Battle of Wadi (1916), Battle of Wadi: Ottoman Empire forces defeat the British, during the Mesopotamian campaign in modern-day Iraq. * January 29 – WWI: Paris is bombed by German Empire, German zeppelins. * January 31 – WWI: An attack is planned on Verdun, France. February * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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