River Mist and Other Stories

By Doppo Kunikida and Kunikida Doppo

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 087011591X
• ISBN13: 9780870115912
• Release Date: January 1983
• Publisher: Kent: Paul Norbury Publication
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.

Customer Reviews

"Life is too short for a long story."

Kunikida Doppo (1871-1908) is one of those writers who, in the Anglophone realm at least, is as widely recognized as he is obscure. No history of Meiji literature would be complete without this tragically short-lived forefather of the Japanese short story, and yet substantial, book-length translations of his works are few and far between. Indeed, David Chibbett's work here, posthumously published after his own untimely passing in 1977, is for all intents and purposes the only one around, and even it is something of a rarity. So it acquires a certain definitiveness on that strength alone--but also in that Chibbett has chosen to translate fifteen of Doppo's key representative works, short stories widely recognized and beloved both for their inherent literary qualities and for their literary historical significance. The stories themselves are interesting, at once quintessentially Meiji and uniquely Doppo. Most are more or less autobiographical, and a few are even more like personal prose-poems and essays than fiction per se. Plot and character often take a back seat to impressionistic sketches and hauntingly suggestive vignettes. The noticeably melodramatic tone of a majority of the stories is alloyed and given depth and backbone by Doppo's Christian/Wordsworthian ideals, his eccentric sensibility hovering in an ever unresolved tension between Romanticism and Realism, and a wry sense of ironic humor extremely rare in Japanese literature. His knack for the tragic also comes in to play here, uncompromisingly portraying the highest human ideals and best of intentions shipwrecking upon the rocks of a hostile or, worse perhaps, indifferent universe. All of these factors come together to make these short stories, disobeying as they do many of the conventions we now associate with this genre, oddly moving and surprisingly memorable. Chibbett's introduction also does a fine job of introducing the writer and his work, going over the outlines of his life necessary for better appreciating many of the stories and ably discussing his place in Japanese literature. A loner and a maverick in the literary circles of the time, Doppo also interacted with some of the era's key figures, including Christian thinkers such as Nitobe Inazo and Uchimura Kanzo and fellow writers such as Tayama Katai and Yano Ryukei--which in and of itself is just historically intriguing. Each story also gets a quick and extremely helpful intro, including original title, date, and publication venue, along with other helpful notes and comments. Sometimes perhaps the translator is a bit too apologetic for the works not conforming to "Western" tastes, and for instance claiming that the ramblingly meditative nature essay "Musashino" is somehow uniquely Japanese and so bound to be opaque and boring to everyone else seems a singularly strange way to entice the potential reader--and anyway, a quick glance at Henry David Thoreau alone gives the lie to such a stark characterization. In any case, the