Associated Names: * Jūran Hisao (English) * 久生 十蘭 (Japanese) * 久生十兰 (Simplified Chinese) * 久生十蘭 (Traditional Chinese)

Mori Ōgai, pseudonym of Mori Rintarō (born February 17, 1862, Tsuwano, Japan—died July 9, 1922, Tokyo), one of the creators of modern Japanese literature. The son of a physician of the aristocratic warrior (samurai) class, Mori Ōgai studied medicine, at first in Tokyo and from 1884 to 1888 in Germany. In 1890 he published the story “Maihime” (“The Dancing Girl”), an account closely based on his own experience of an unhappy attachment between a German girl and a Japanese student in Berlin. It represented a marked departure from the impersonal fiction of preceding generations and initiated a vogue for autobiographical revelations among Japanese writers. Ōgai’s most popular novel, Gan (1911–13; part translation: The Wild Goose), is the story of the undeclared love of a moneylender’s mistress for a medical student who passes by her house each day. Ōgai also translated Hans Christian Andersen’s autobiographical novel Improvisatoren. In 1912 Ōgai was profoundly moved by the suicide of General Nogi Maresuke, following the death of the emperor Meiji, and he turned to historical fiction depicting the samurai code. The heroes of several works are warriors who, like General Nogi, commit suicide in order to follow their masters to the grave. Despite his early confessional writings, Ōgai came to share with his samurai heroes a reluctance to dwell on emotions. His detachment made his later works seem cold, but their strength and integrity were strikingly close to the samurai ideals he so admired.

Yumeno Kyūsaku (native name: 夢野 久作) was the pen name of the early Shōwa period Japanese author Sugiyama Yasumichi. The pen name literally means "a person who always dreams." He wrote detective novels and is known for his avant-gardism and his surrealistic, wildly imaginative and fantastic, even bizarre narratives. Kyūsaku’s first success was a nursery tale Shiraga Kozō (White Hair Boy, 1922), which was largely ignored by the public. It was not until his first novella, Ayakashi no Tsuzumi (Apparitional Hand Drum, 1924) in the literary magazine Shinseinen that his name became known. His subsequent works include Binzume jigoku (Hell in the Bottles, 1928), Kori no hate (End of the Ice, 1933) and his most significant novel Dogra Magra (ドグラマグラ, 1935), which is considered a precursor of modern Japanese science fiction and was adapted for a 1988 movie. Kyūsaku died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1936 while talking with a visitor at home.

Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (芥川 龍之介) was one of the first prewar Japanese writers to achieve a wide foreign readership, partly because of his technical virtuosity, partly because his work seemed to represent imaginative fiction as opposed to the mundane accounts of the I-novelists of the time, partly because of his brilliant joining of traditional material to a modern sensibility, and partly because of film director Kurosawa Akira's masterful adaptation of two of his short stories for the screen. Akutagawa was born in the Kyōbashi district Tokyo as the eldest son of a dairy operator named Shinbara Toshizō and his wife Fuku. He was named "Ryūnosuke" ("Dragon Offshoot") because he was born in the Year of the Dragon, in the Month of the Dragon, on the Day of the Dragon, and at the Hour of the Dragon (8 a.m.). Seven months after Akutagawa's birth, his mother went insane and he was adopted by her older brother, taking the Akutagawa family name. Despite the shadow this experience cast over Akutagawa's life, he benefited from the traditional literary atmosphere of his uncle's home, located in what had been the "downtown" section of Edo. At school Akutagawa was an outstanding student, excelling in the Chinese classics. He entered the First High School in 1910, striking up relationships with such classmates as Kikuchi Kan, Kume Masao, Yamamoto Yūzō, and Tsuchiya Bunmei. Immersing himself in Western literature, he increasingly came to look for meaning in art rather than in life. In 1913, he entered Tokyo Imperial University, majoring in English literature. The next year, Akutagawa and his former high school friends revived the journal Shinshichō (New Currents of Thought), publishing translations of William Butler Yeats and Anatole France along with original works of their own. Akutagawa published the story Rashōmon in the magazine Teikoku bungaku (Imperial Literature) in 1915. The story, which went largely unnoticed, grew out of the egoism Akutagawa confronted after experiencing disappointment in love. The same year, Akutagawa started going to the meetings held every Thursday at the house of Natsume Sōseki, and thereafter considered himself Sōseki's disciple. The lapsed Shinshichō was revived yet again in 1916, and Sōseki lavished praise on Akutagawa's story Hana (The Nose) when it appeared in the first issue of that magazine. After graduating from Tokyo University, Akutagawa earned a reputation as a highly skilled stylist whose stories reinterpreted classical works and historical incidents from a distinctly modern standpoint. His overriding themes became the ugliness of human egoism and the value of art, themes that received expression in a number of brilliant, tightly organized short stories conventionally categorized as Edo-mono (stories set in the Edo period), ōchō-mono (stories set in the Heian period), Kirishitan-mono (stories dealing with premodern Christians in Japan), and kaika-mono (stories of the early Meiji period). The Edo-mono include Gesaku zanmai (A Life Devoted to Gesaku, 1917) and Kareno-shō (Gleanings from a Withered Field, 1918); the ōchō-mono are perhaps best represented by Jigoku hen (Hell Screen, 1918); the Kirishitan-mono include Hokōnin no shi (The Death of a Christian, 1918), and kaika-mono include Butōkai(The Ball, 1920). Akutagawa married Tsukamoto Fumiko in 1918 and the following year left his post as English instructor at the naval academy in Yokosuka, becoming an employee of the Mainichi Shinbun. This period was a productive one, as has already been noted, and the success of stories like Mikan (Mandarin Oranges, 1919) and Aki (Autumn, 1920) prompted him to turn his attention increasingly to modern materials. This, along with the introspection occasioned by growing health and nervous problems, resulted in a series of autobiographically-based stories known as Yasukichi-mono, after the name of the main character. Works such as Daidōji Shinsuke no hansei(The Early Life of

Atsushi Nakajima (中島敦, Nakajima Atsushi, 5 May 1909 – 4 December 1942) was a Japanese author known for his unique style and self-introspective themes. His major works include "The Moon Over the Mountain" and "Light, Wind and Dreams". During his life he wrote about 20 works, including unfinished works, typically inspired by Classical Chinese stories and his own life experiences.

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (谷崎 潤一郎) was a Japanese author, and one of the major writers of modern Japanese literature, perhaps the most popular Japanese novelist after Natsume Sōseki. Some of his works present a rather shocking world of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions; others, less sensational, subtly portray the dynamics of family life in the context of the rapid changes in 20th-century Japanese society. Frequently his stories are narrated in the context of a search for cultural identity in which constructions of "the West" and "Japanese tradition" are juxtaposed. The results are complex, ironic, demure, and provocative.

Japanese novelist, journalist, folklorist, translator from Chinese language. He wrote several historical novels and some biographies. Most famous for his samples of "kaidans", traditional mystery stories.

Japanese profile: 泉 鏡花 Kyōka was born Kyōtarō Izumi on November 4, 1873 in the Shitashinmachi section of Kanazawa, Ishikawa, to Seiji Izumi, a chaser and inlayer of metallic ornaments, and Suzu Nakata, daughter of a tsuzumi hand-drum player from Edo and younger sister to lead protagonist of the Noh theater, Kintarō Matsumoto. Because of his family's impovershed circumstances, he attended the tuition-free Hokuriku English-Japanese School, run by Christian missionaries. Even before he entered grade school, young Kintarō's mother introduced him to literature in picture-books interspersed with text called kusazōshi, and his works would later show the influence of this early contact with such visual forms of story-telling. In April 1883, at ten years old, Kyōka lost his mother, who was 29 at the time. It was a great blow to his young mind, and he would attempt to recreate memories of her in works throughout his literary career. At a friend's boarding house in April 1889, Kyōka was deeply impressed by Ozaki Kōyō's "Amorous Confessions of Two Nuns" and decided to pursue a career in literature. That June he took a trip to Toyama Prefecture. At this time he worked as a teacher in private preparatory schools and spent his free time running through yomihon and kusazōshi. In November of that year, however, Kyōka's aspiration to an artistic career drove him to Tokyo, where he intended to enter the tutelage of Kōyō himself. On 19 November 1891, he called on Kōyō in Ushigome(part of present-day Shinjuku) without prior introduction and requested that he be allowed into the school immediately. He was accepted, and from that time began life as a live-in apprentice. Other than a brief trip to Kanazawa in December of the following year, Kyōka spent all of his time in the Ozaki household, proving his value to Kōyō through correcting his manuscripts and household tasks. Kyōka greatly adored his teacher, thinking of him as a teacher of more than literature, a benefactor who nourished his early career before he gained a name for himself. He felt deeply a personal indebtedness to Kōyō, and continued to admire the author throughout his life.