Mori Ogai
(1862–1922), Japanese physician and novelist. Intellectual giant and Renaissance man of the Meiji era (1868–1912), Ogai was born Mori Rintaro in Tsuwano (present-day Shimane Prefecture). He excelled in both the arts and sciences as a medical scientist, linguist, translator, critic, and historian. After graduating from medical school, he joined the army and was sent to Germany, where he studied between 1884 and 1888. Ogai served as surgeon general to the Japanese army and continued a productive literary career to the end. Immediately upon returning to Japan, he published an anthology of lyric poetry, Omokage (Vestiges, 1889) and his own literary journal. Early novellas such as Maihime (Dancing Girl, 1890) show an idealistic romanticism and elements of his own experience in Germany. Gan (Wild Goose, 1911–1913), a romantic tale of unrequited love, remains one of the author's most popular works. In his middle period, following the death of Emperor Meiji, he turned to the past and produced many historical works, both fictional and biographical. His late period yielded biographies of doctors of the Edo period. Some of his masterful translations include Andersen's Improvisatoren, Goethe's Faust, Ibsen's Ghosts and A Doll's House, Shakespeare's Macbeth, and hundreds more.
Further Reading
Bowring, Richard John. (1977) Mori Ogai and the Modernisation of Japanese Culture. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Rimer, John Thomas. (1975) Mori Ogai. New York: Twayne Publishers.
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