Naoya Shiga

Shiga Naoya (Japanese志 贺 直 哉; born February 20, 1883 in Ishinomaki in Miyagi Prefecture Japan, † October 21, 1971 in Atami Shizuoka Prefecture in Japanese ) is one of the most important Japanese authors of the 20th century.

Life

Shiga Naoya was born the son of a wealthy businessman upper class family with samurai tradition. The patriarchal and at the same time influenced by ruthless entrepreneurship views his father called out early on the resistance of the Son, and led to years of disputes, which should be reflected in the work of the young author later. From 1889 to 1906 Shiga attended the elite Gakushuin, at the time a high school of the aristocracy and the upper middle class. He then studied English literature at Tokyo Imperial University, but he left four years later. He was then only a writer. He founded in 1910 the literary magazine Shirakaba ( White birch ).

Work

Being in the middle of the 19th century, the great powers reached the long closed for foreigners in Japan, the Japanese were forced to European culture to open up to and to make literary familiar with it. Around 1860 appeared first broadcasts of European works, the first complete novel from the West in 1878 translated into Japanese. 1885 appeared The essence of the novel ( SHOSETSU Shinzui ) of Tsubouchi Shoyo ( 1859-1935 ), the first literary critical work of modern Japanese literature.

Around the turn of the century the French naturalism came to Japan. In contrast to the European naturalism characterizes the Japanese its tendency to passionate confession. Beginning of the 20th century was one of skepticism, the passion and the dark side of life, brought on by the increased naturalism with it, become tired.

In the reaction against the realist school of literary circle of friends In 1910 Shirakaba -ha ( White birch ), which also Naoya Shiga counted. The magazine Shirakaba has been a significant, inspired by an idealistic form of humanism movement its name. The authors gathered there to Natsume Soseki taught that life is bright and satisfying when people enjoy understand. Peace and tranquility were praised. The young Shirakaba - writers were heavily influenced by the humanism of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

In Shiga first writings to his struggles reflect in asserting his individuality against the constraints of family and society as well as the search for a new ethic beyond the ruling, based on traditional ancestor worship ideology of Tennō worship. Self-destruction and crime appear as extreme consequence of uncompromising self-assertion against an environment that denied an individual development.

A four-year hiatus and Shiga reconciliation with his father meant a turning point in his work. In his works he created in 1917, he avoided any confrontation. In its place the in the traditional Japanese way of thinking deep-rooted desire for harmony is entered, as an essential aspect of a search for a fulfilled life.

Shiga wrote short stories, novellas and novels. They tell of my own experience, his main works are autobiographical. With a sure intuition he meets the essential and displays it symbolized in the cycle of nature transience of life and the struggle of the individual to self-realization are the central themes of his work in convincing simplicity. Stylistic brilliance and subtle perception characterize the short stories and sketches that reflect Shiga humanist idea of a liberated from social deformity, striving for individual development and inner harmony people.

" Shiga Naoya has created one of the first a literary style with which the character of modern Japanese thought and feeling can be expressed in a convincing and accurate way ... Just a creative writer like Shiga was the disjointed elements of the Japanese language to a literary tool forging, which is suitable for a true, detailed, description of life as it is happening to us. "

Important works Shiga:

• The razor ( novella, 1910)
• The crime of Han ( novella, 1913)
• A peaceable couple ( novella, 1917)
• In Kinosaki ( novella, 1917)
• Manazuru ( novella, 1920)
• Campfire ( novella, 1920)
• The Rebirth ( novella, 1924)
• The path through dark night (novels, 1921-1937 )
• Travel in early spring ( novella, 1941)
• The ashen Moon ( novella, 1946)
• Autumn Wind ( novella, 1949)