Nagayo Yoshirō
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Nagayo Yoshirō |
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| Born: | (6 August 1888 Tokyo, Japan |
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| Died: | 29 October 1961 Tokyo, Japan |
| Occupation: | Writer |
| Genres: | novels and stage plays |
| Literary movement: | Shirakaba |
| Influences: | Mushanokoji Saneatsu, Shiga Naoya |
Yoshirō Nagayo (長与善郎 Nagayo Yoshirō?) (6 August 1888 – 29 October 1961) was a novelist and playwright in Showa period Japan.
Nagayo was born in Tokyo, as the 5th son of the famous doctor, Nagayo Sensai. He attended the Gakushuin peer's school, and went on to graduate from Tokyo Imperial University. Through his school connections, he made the acquaintance of Mushanokoji Saneatsu and Shiga Naoya, and he contributed works to the Shirakaba (White Birch) literary journal. He is considered a typical spokesman for the humanistic philosophy of that school.
Publication of Shirakaba was suspended in 1923 after the Great Kanto Earthquake, but Nagayo and Mushanokoji collaborated to bring out a new literary magazine, Fuji, the same year. As a literary critic for Fuji, Nagayo railed against the proletarian literature movement of the pre-war period.
His major works include the plays Kou to Ryuho (1916-1917), Indara no ko (Child of Indra, 1921), and the historical novel Takezawa sensei to iu hito (1924-25).
He is best known in the West for his screenplay Seido no Kirisuto (Christ in Bronze), a story about religious persecution in Edo period Japan, which was one of the entries in competition at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival.
[edit] References
- Mortimer, Maya. Meeting the Sensei: The Role of the Master in Shirakaba Writers. Brill's Japanese Studies Library, 11. (2000). ISBN: 90 04 11655 9
