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Mori Ōgai: 18 works in the original Japanese, with translation

Mori Ōgai (February 17, 1862 – July 8, 1922), born Mori Rintarō, was a Japanese Army Surgeon general officer, translator, novelist and poet, and father of the writer Mari Mori. He obtained his medical license at a young age, introduced translated German literary works to Japanese readers, and is considered a leading figure who modernized Japanese literature; his major work is The Wild Geese (1911–1913).

Works in the library

Cultural notes (selection)

遠島 高瀬舟

A punishment of exile in the Edo period, banishing criminals to remote islands such as Sado, Oki, and Hachijōjima. It was a severe penalty, second only to execution.

潮汲み女 Sansho the Steward

A woman who carries seawater from the shore at salt fields (shiohama) to be boiled down into salt. "空桶を担いで" (shouldering empty buckets) depicts her labour going back and forth between the salt flats and her home, a realistic detail of the local scene.

木津川口で三日間さらした上、斬罪に処する The Last Phrase

Shirei (sarashi) was a public-exposure punishment attached to capital sentences: the condemned was bound and put on display in a crowded place such as a riverbank in a busy district, and then executed, as a warning to others. Kizu-gawa mouth was a key point on the Yodo River water transport network in Osaka, densely populated and thus well suited to public exposure.

参勤 The Abe Family

The Edo shogunate required daimyo to travel to Edo at regular intervals to serve the shogun, leaving their wives and children in Edo as hostages while also attending to the government of their domains. This became a fixed institution during the Kan'ei era, and the size of a procession was set by the domain's kokudaka. Tadatoshi's journey east with the procession of a 540,000-koku daimyo was the performance of this duty.