Mori Ōgai

Mori Ōgai (Tsuwano, 1862 – Tokyo, 1922) was a Japanese military surgeon, translator, critic and novelist of the Meiji era. Together with Natsume Sōseki, he is one of the great writers of that period, and a key figure for understanding how Western literary and scientific ideas reached Japan.

Born into a family of physicians serving the feudal lord of Tsuwano, he received as a boy a education in the Confucian classics, along with Dutch and Western medicine. After the Meiji Restoration his family moved to Tokyo, where he qualified in medicine in 1881 at the age of nineteen. From 1884 to 1888 he studied in Germany, where he discovered European literature and later translated it with remarkable skill, including works by Goethe, Schiller, Ibsen and Andersen.

His military career ran alongside his literary one. He served as a doctor in the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, and rose to high rank. As a magazine editor he championed a modern approach to literary criticism and an idea of art that should not be confined to realism. His works, such as The Dancing Girl and Vita Sexualis, combine intimate observation with a restrained and detached prose. Later he turned to historical stories set in the Edo period, examining the ethics of their characters with a sober eye.

He also defended freedom of thought against state censorship, and in his writings he questioned a modernisation that copied the West without discernment. His legacy lies in giving modern Japanese literature a new form and in introducing European traditions to Japanese readers. Today he is regarded as one of the great classic authors of modern Japan.