Kafū Nagai
Kafū Nagai in 1947
Born	Sōkichi Nagai (1879-12-03)3 December 1879 Tokyo, Japan
Died	30 April 1959(1959-04-30) (aged 79) Ichikawa, Japan
Occupation	Writer, translator, editor
Education	Junior High School
Literary movement	Naturalism, Aestheticism

Kafū Nagai (永井 荷風, Nagai Kafū, 3 December 1879 – 30 April 1959) was a Japanese writer, editor and translator.^[1] His works like Geisha in Rivalry and A Strange Tale from East of the River are noted for their depictions of life of the demimonde in early 20th-century Tokyo.^[2]

Nagai was born Sōkichi Nagai (永井 壮吉) in Koishikawa, Bunkyō, Tokyo, as the eldest son of government official Kyūichirō Nagai^[1][3] and his wife Tsune, the daughter of scholar Washizu Kidō.^[4] His father was an elite government official in the Home Ministry, who had studied as an exchange student in the United States^[1] and also wrote and published Chinese poetry.^[5] Kyūichirō later left his Ministry occupation to work for the Nippon Yusen shipping company.^[2] When the second son was born in 1883, Nagai was sent to live with his maternal grandmother until 1886.^[5] During his childhood, he visited a Chinese language school, and, under his mother's influence, was taught singing and playing music instruments, showing a fondness for utazawa, a late Edo era style of singing accompanied by the shamisen.^[5] Starting in 1890, he was also taught English language.^[5]

Due to illness, Nagai spent several months in 1895 in a hospital in Odawara.^[6] From 1897 on, he started his regular visits to the Yoshiwara red-light district, accompanied by his friend and writer Seiichi Inoue (1878–1923).^[5] The same year, he graduated from Junior High School.^[1] With his mother and younger brothers, he visited Shanghai, where his father was working for Nippon Yusen.^[6] He returned to Japan in Autumn and enrolled in the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages.^[1][3]

In 1898, he published his first short story Sudare no tsuki.^[5] He became a disciple of novelist Hirotsu Ryūrō and writer Fukuchi Ōchi, studied rakugo and kabuki play writing, appeared on stage in yose plays, and dropped out of University.^[1][5] His writings were influenced by French Naturalism and Émile Zola, whose work he also translated.^[5] Between 1903 and 1908, through his father's influence, Nagai visited the United States and later France, a time which he wrote down in his American Stories ^[jp] (Amerika monogatari) and Furansu monogatari (lit. "French Stories").^[5] The 1908 publication of American Stories met with much critical acclaim.^[1]

In 1910, Nagai started teaching as a professor of literature at Keio University and became the editor of the literary magazine Mita Bungaku.^[1] At this time, he had already turned away from Naturalism and taken a shift towards Aestheticism.^[1][3][5] The transition from the Meiji era to the Taishō era was also a turning point in Nagai's life: the death of his father, the divorce from both his first and second wife^[1] (the second marriage—to a geisha—led to the alienation of his mother),^[2] and the resigning from his position at Keio University and Mita Bungaku.^[1] A frequenter of Tokyo's demimonde, Nagai wrote many stories about its inhabitants, geisha, courtesans and their customers, most notably Geisha in Rivalry (1916–17).^[2]

After a decade-long hiatus, he published the novellas During the Rains (1931), Flowers in the Shade (1934) and A Strange Tale from East of the River (1937), with the latter having repeatedly been cited as his major work.^[2][7] His contempt for the militarist regime, which in turn regarded his work as subversive for the war effort, led to a halt of the publishing of his writings until the end of World War II.^[1][2] The publication of his diaries (1917–1959) ranks as the major literary event of his post-war career.^[2]

In 1952, Nagai received the Order of Culture, and in 1954, he was elected a member of the Japan Art Academy.^[1] He died on 30 April 1959.^[1][2]

• 1908: American Stories (あめりか物語, Amerika monogatari)
• 1911: The River Sumida (すみだ川, Sumidagawa)
• 1916–1917: Geisha in Rivalry (腕くらべ, Ude kurabe)
• 1917–1959: Danchōtei nichijō (断腸亭日乗)
• 1931: During the Rains (つゆのあとさき, Tsuyu no atosaki)
• 1934: Flowers in the Shade (ひかげの花, Hikage no hana)
• 1937: A Strange Tale from East of the River (濹東綺譚, Bokutō kidan)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kafū Nagai.

• Works by Kafu Nagai at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Kafū Nagai at the Internet Archive
• Works by Kafū Nagai at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• J'Lit | Authors : Kafu Nagai | Books from Japan (in English)
• Kafū Nagai's grave (in English)