Authentic Shiratori - technewscircle

The life of the characters

The descendants of the Masamune family in the Edo period. He graduated from Tokyo Vocational College (the predecessor of Waseda University) in 1901. He was baptized by Masahisa Uemura and Kan Uchimura and became Christian. , And then began to publish works. In 1903, he was recommended as a reporter for the Yomiuri News Agency by the Publishing Department of the Early University, responsible for drama, literature, and fine arts criticism. In 1904, he published his debut novel "Loneliness". After he became famous for his distinctive character theory, he began to write novels. After the publication of the short story "Dust" in 1907, he was regarded as the naturalistic literature following Shimazaki Fujimura, Kunikida Dobu, and Tianshan Hanabukuro. Representative writer. In 1910, he resigned from the Yomiuri Shimbun and specialized in writing. In 1911, he married the daughter of Tokubei Shimizu, an oil merchant in Kofu City. "Where to Go" in 1908 and "Clay Dolls" in 1911 described people living in a gloomy world with no way out. The same was true for "The Smell of the Cowshed" and "The Dead and the Living" in the 1916s. In 1924, he published one of the most famous drama works "The Happiness of Life". His collection of commentaries included "Reviews on Literary Figures" published in 1932, "Thoughts and No Thoughts" in 1938, "Biography of Literary Children" and so on. He was elected as a member of the Academy of Arts in 1940, and served as the president of the Japanese PEN Association in 1943. In 1950, he was awarded the Cultural Medal by the Japanese Government. He died of pancreatic cancer in Showa 37 (1962) and was buried in Tamaruen Garden.

Writing Career and Features of Works

Zheng Zong Shiratori's writing career lasted sixty years. Some of his successful works are mostly short stories. Among them, "Where to Go" (1908) writes a young writer who denies life completely and wants to escape reality, but he doesn't know where to go, so he is distressed. "The Bay Area" (1915) takes the harbor on the coast of the Seto Inland Sea as the background and writes about the contradiction between father and son in the old family. The short story "The Sorrow of War Victims" (1946) published after the war is about the experiences of intellectuals in the war years, accusing the Japanese militarists of the war of aggression that brought disasters to the people. The work profoundly reveals the sufferings of intellectuals in the years of war. The daily life of an ordinary family who fled from the ruins of the city to the countryside to take refuge in the daily life, pours out people's curse on war, and expresses people's peace and happiness. Desire.

Articles and works

His autobiographical novel "Rootless Grass" (1942) was shattered because the dream of a young man pursuing a new life was shattered, and he was forced to stop writing halfway through. During the period when the reactionary trend was rampant, his work had a certain resistance. His other unfinished novel, "Escape from Japan" (1949), reflects the anxious mood of Japanese intellectuals who could not find a way out after the war. The short story "This Fall" (1959) expresses his mood in his later years through the author's return home to attend the funeral of his second brother Atsushi. His works mostly analyze life with harsh brushstrokes, portray people's psychology, and express the perplexity and anxiety of intellectuals towards life. Akutagawa Ryunosuke pointed out: "Shiratori's art is not afraid to say that it starts from denial and ends with denial."

He also authored novels "Clay Dolls" (1911) and "The Dead and the Living" (1916), the script "The Happiness of Life" (1924), "Azuchi Spring" (1926), the essay "The History of the Rise and Fall of Naturalism" (1948), "On the Characters in the Literary Circles" (1932), etc., and received comments for writing Pay attention to.