Kanoko Okamoto (1889–1939)
Autor(a) de A Riot of Goldfish
About the Author
Obras de Kanoko Okamoto
The White Blackbird and Other Writings / The Tale of an Old Geisha and Other Stories (1985) 9 cópias
La grulla doliente 1 exemplar(es)
Kawa akari – Rógishó (河明かり・老妓抄) 1 exemplar(es)
Associated Works
To Live and to Write: Selections by Japanese Women Writers, 1913-1938 (1987) — Contribuinte — 42 cópias
釣魚の迷宮―怪異幻魚譚~ファンに贈る傑作集 — Contribuinte — 1 exemplar(es)
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Nome de batismo
- Ohnuki, Kano
- Data de nascimento
- 1889
- Data de falecimento
- 1939
- Sexo
- female
- Nacionalidade
- Japan
- Local de nascimento
- Minato, Tokoyo, Japan.
- Pequena biografia
- Kanoko Okamoto (1889–1939) was a Japanese poet, novelist, and scholar of Buddhism whose prose works examine the relationships between the classes and sexes in her contemporary Japan. Born to an extremely weathly family and taught by a governess.Kanoko was influenced greatly by her older brother, Shosen, and his classmate Jun'ichirō Tanizaki who studied at the First Higher School and Tokyo Imperial University. While still a student at the Atami Gakuen girls' high school, Kanoko called on the renowned poet, Yosano Akiko, and this encounter prompted her to start contributing tanka to the poetry magazine Myōjō ("Bright Star"). Later, she played an active part as a key contributor to another journal, Subaru ("Pleiades"). She published Karoki-netami, the first of her five tanka anthologies, in 1912.
In 1908, she met cartoonist Okamoto Ippei while on a holiday in Karuizawa, Nagano together with her father. However, her family was extremely opposed to the relationship, and she created a scandal by moving in together with him in 1910 without marriage. Their eldest son, the famous avant-garde painter Okamoto Tarō, was born the next year. However, Kanoko's family life was filled with tragedy. Soon after she moved in with Okamoto Ippei, her brother, then her mother died. Her eldest daughter was born with mental health problems, and soon died. Her common-law husband was opposed to her independence, jealous of her artistic successes and was unfaithful. Her younger son was also born with weak health, and died in infancy.
These problems led Kanoko to turn to religion. She was first interested in Protestant Christianity, but did not find it to her liking. She then turned to the Jodo Shinshu sect of Buddhism, as espoused by Shinran, which was the start of her work as a researcher of Buddhism, about which she wrote numerous essays.Her life was ended prematurely in 1939 when she died of a brain hemorrhage. She was 49 years old.
Membros
Resenhas
En agosto de 1923, un mes antes del Gran Terremoto de Kanto, la poetisa Kanoko Okamoto se hospeda en el ryokan Hiranoya (actual Hotel New Kamakura) para veranear con su singular familia. Allí coincide con Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Tras el azaroso encuentro, Kanoko descubrirá el drama que arrastra el famoso escritor y que lo conduciría al suicidio apenas cuatro años más tarde.
Aquel triste recuerdo fue revelado al mundo en esta obra, una autoficción que narra con desgarradora pasión la singular conexión entre una poetisa y un famoso escritor antes de su doliente ocaso.
La grulla doliente es la obra debut de una de las escritoras más singulares de la literatura japonesa y, sin duda, una de las más polémicas. Esta novela explora, de un modo magistral, muchos de los temas que hicieron tambalear la sociedad japonesa de principios del siglo XX como fueron la occidentalización, el suicidio o el feminismo.… (mais)
Aquel triste recuerdo fue revelado al mundo en esta obra, una autoficción que narra con desgarradora pasión la singular conexión entre una poetisa y un famoso escritor antes de su doliente ocaso.
La grulla doliente es la obra debut de una de las escritoras más singulares de la literatura japonesa y, sin duda, una de las más polémicas. Esta novela explora, de un modo magistral, muchos de los temas que hicieron tambalear la sociedad japonesa de principios del siglo XX como fueron la occidentalización, el suicidio o el feminismo.… (mais)
Two poignant stories exploring frustration, self-worth and trying to make your mark in the world. Set in Japan in the years between the two 20th century world wars, they show a nation caught between the old feudal way of life and the thrusting modernity brought in by the Meiji era. The men are largely frustrated and unsettled by their inability to grasp the opportunities modernity seems to offer them, while the women float serenely above them. An interesting pair of stories.
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Associated Authors
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 13
- Also by
- 6
- Membros
- 129
- Popularidade
- #156,299
- Avaliação
- 4.0
- Resenhas
- 4
- ISBNs
- 12
- Idiomas
- 5
Kanoko Okamoto was born in 1889, the daughter of a very wealthy family and grew up in privilege, though sickly. She married a poor cartoonist, who with the first blush of success, spent his days with geisha. He came around, however, and devoted himself to his wife's writing career. When Kanoko fell in love with a tubercular young man, her husband invited him to live with them until he died three years later. Husband and wife then turned to the study of religion, and Kanoko became well-known as a speaker and writer on Buddhism. They then took a three year tour of Europe, bringing with them two more of Kanoko's lovers and their son. When they returned, they set up house with one of the men acting as her physician, the other as the maid, and the husband as (celibate) secretary and research assistant. Although many were scandalized by her lifestyle, others compared it to a successful male writer who might have had a wife, maid, and mistress. During her life, Kanoko moved from writing poetry to short fiction, and had she lived longer (she died at 49), she might have written novels as well.
In the introduction, David Mitchell writes that Japanese critics often call her writing "overwrought," and with that I would agree. Here is a passage from early in "A Riot of Goldfish":
It was as if she were allowing the pain caused by the sharp thorns of his words to fill her heart until it overflowed as tears. Soon her face would tremble violently and a single, pearl-coloured tear would emerge from her lower eyelid like the rising moon.
And yet, I kept reading drawn in by the story of the unrequited love held by a goldfish breeder with his patron's daughter. Although Mataichi had known Masako since they were children, it wasn't until a single act of defiance on her part that he fell in love with her. He became obsessed with her, even after she married, and yet had a poor opinion of her.
It was something to do with her lack of personality. She was an unstoppable woman who simply blossomed like a beautiful butterfly. She overflowed with charm, and yet her charm was only of a physiological sort. She sometimes said clever things, but one was left with the impression of a mechanical doll that spoke through a special talking apparatus; or of an ineffable, far-off, and eerie creature.
He goes on to compare her to a mannequin. Yet he cannot stop thinking of her. She had once expressed a desire to see him breed a new type of goldfish, and Mataichi makes that his life's goal. As the years pass, the mythical goldfish he attempts to create becomes a stand-in for Masako herself. The aesthetic becomes his reality.… (mais)