Mimei Ogawa

Mimei Ogawa (Japanese小川 未 明, Ogawa Mimei, actually Ogawa Kensaku; * 1882 in Takada in the Japanese prefecture of Niigata, † 1961 in Tokyo) is the author of short stories, children's stories and fairy tales.

Life

Ogawa Mimei studied at the Faculty of English Literature of Waseda University and received his doctorate there in 1905. Ogawa In the same year published his first literary work. Waseda was at the time the academic center of the Japanese naturalism. Since Ogawa the ideal of romance to a close, his literary success was at first. In 1910 he published his first fairy tale.

Work

In his tales to natural romance and pure love reflect. Ogawa is known in Japan as the founder of modern Japanese children's literature. Ogawa's meaning is similar to the Hans Christian Andersen. His stories are often poignant and of considerable artistic perfection. They helped to set a new benchmark for children 's literature in Japan. Ogawa chooses for his children's stories especially materials from everyday life; many of them give his strong social sympathy again.

One of the most famous fairy tales Ogawa 's " The Mermaid and the red candles " ( The Mermaid and the Red Candles ). Another, " The cow woman" from 1919, describes a mother whose soul does not come after her death to rest. She wanders around, because her little son is left alone in abject poverty. The mother appears to her son in different presentations to help him and to lead.

The peculiarity of Ogawa lies in the expression of religious and philosophical symbolism that shows the everlasting cycle of life. The sinking of organisms is not definitive, but life just takes a different form: in the story " The cow woman" is changing the mother to the mother's love.

In 1946 she was awarded the Noma Literary Prize.

Selection

• Kuchu no geirto (空中 の 芸当) German bet in the ether, translated by Monique Humbert, in: Nippon, 1965, pp. 215-238

Sources and Literature

• Ivan Morris ( ed.): Nippon. Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1965
• Donald Keene: Japanese literature. Orell Füssli Verlag, Zurich, 1962 ( Original title: Japanese Literature, John Murray, London 1953)