In The Wild Geese, prominent Japanese novelist Ogai Mori offers a poignant story of unfulfilled love, set against the background of the dizzying social change accompanying the fall of the Meiji regime. The young heroine, Otama, is forced by poverty to become a moneylender's mistress. She is surrounded by skillfully-drawn characters—her weak-willed father, her virile and calculating lover (and his suspicious wife), and the handsome student who is both the object of her desire, and the symbol of her rescue—as well as a colorful procession of Meiji era figures—geisha, students, entertainers, unscrupulous matchmakers, shopkeepers, and greedy landladies. 
Like those around her, and like the wild geese of the title, Otama yearns for the freedom of flight. Her dawning consciousness of her predicament brings the novel to a touching climax. 
Written in 1913, The Wild Geese enjoyed such success in Japan that it was made into a film, shown abroad as The Mistress.

The Wild Geese

Literature & Fiction

Ōgai, Mori

Literary

Tuttle Pub

Text: English, Japanese (translation)

Saiki Koi and Other Stories (UNESCO COLLECTION OF REPRESENTATIVE WORKS : JAPANESE SERIES) (English and Japanese Edition)

Univ of Hawaii Pr

Ogai's (1862-1922) stature among modern Japanese writers is unparalleled, but until recently his work in translation has languished in scholarly monographs and journals. Japan scholar Rimer has gathered several of Ogai's best-known stories and the first complete translation of a major work, Seinen ("

Youth and Other Stories (SHAPS Library of Translations)

Contemporary

University of Hawaii Press

The literary writings of Mori Ōgai (1862-1922), one of the giant figures of the Meiji period, have become increasingly well known to readers of English through a number of recent translations of his novels and short stories. Ōgai was more than a writer of fiction, however. He has long been regarded in Japan as one of the most influential intellectual and artistic figures of his period, possessing a wide range of enthusiasms and concerns, many developed through his early European experiences. Not a Song Like Any Other attempts to reveal the full range of Ōgai’s creative endeavor, providing trenchant examples of his remarkable range, from dramatist and storyteller to poet and polemicist, all translated into English for the first time. The first of seven parts, “The Author Himself,” offers a variety of self portraits and other insights into Ōgai’s character through his essays―laconic, ironic, detached―written over the course of his career. “Mori Ōgai in Germany” reveals his responses to living in Germany in the 1880s and seeing for the first time how his country was being interpreted from the outside. It includes his celebrated and spirited defense of his country, originally published in a German newspaper. “Mori Ōgai and the World of Politics” relates his uneasy reactions to Japanese society at a later phase in his career. The fourth section provides some of the first information available in English concerning his lifelong interest in painting and other aspects of the visual arts in the Japan of his day. Ōgai’s theatrical experiments are briefly chronicled in Part 5. “Four Unusual Stories” offers new evidence of the range of the writer’s interests and ambitions. The final section includes some of the first translations of Ōgai’s poetry available in English.Contributors: Richard Bowring, Sarah Cox, Sanford Goldstein, Andrew Hall, Mikiko Hirayama, Helen Hopper, Marvin Marcus, Keiko McDonald, J. Thomas Rimer, Hiroaki Sato, William J. Tyler.

Not a Song Like Any Other: An Anthology of Writings by Mori Ogai

History & Criticism

Chickens (Japanese "Characters")

Japan Publications Trading Co.

The Wild Goose (Volume 14) (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies)

U of M Center For Japanese Studies

VITA SEXUALIS OU L'APPRENTISSAGE AMOUREUX DU PROFESSEUR KANAI SHIZUKA (CONNAISSANCE DE L'ORIENT (1))

Gallimard]

Die Tänzerin. Zwei Erzählungen.

Suhrkamp

This modern classic, written in 1913, was the source for the highly acclaimed film, The Mistress In The Wild Geese, prominent Japanese novelist Ogai Mori offers a poignant story of unfulfilled love, set against the background of the dizzying social change accompanying the fall of the Meiji regime. The young heroine, Otama, is forced by poverty to become a moneylender's mistress. She is surrounded by skillfully-drawn characters—her weak-willed father, her virile and calculating lover (and his suspicious wife), and the handsome student who is both the object of her desire and the symbol of her rescue—as well as a colorful procession of Meiji era figures—geisha, students, entertainers, unscrupulous matchmakers, shopkeepers, and greedy landladies. Like those around her, and like the wild geese of the titles, Otama yearns for the freedom of flight. Her dawning consciousness of her predicament brings the novel to a touching climax.

Tuttle+publishing

Vita sexualis

Erotica

ADESIARA

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