更新日：2010年7月5日

Shiga Naoya

The novelist Shiga Naoya was born in Miyagi Prefecture in 1883. He studied at Gakushuin (Peers School) and Tokyo University, which he quit later without graduating.

While he was at Gakushuin, he and his friends, Mushanokoji Saneatsu and Kinoshita Rigen, started a handwritten magazine Boya (Perspective), which was circulated within their literary group. In 1910 he contributed the story "Abashiri made" (To Abashiri) to the first issue of Shirakaba (White Birch), a literary magazine of which he was a founding member. He also published novels such as SEIGIHA (The righteous) and OTSU JUNKICHI in other magazines. Later, escalating discord with his father prompted him to leave his parents’ home.

In his solitary new life in Onomichi, Hiroshima, he started writing fragments of a story which would later form the core of the first half of the long novel, AN’YA KORO (tr. A Dark Night’s Passing). In 1921, he began serializing AN’YA KORO in the magazine Kaizo, which led to the publication of the first volume of the novel. He ran into difficulties with the second volume, but managed to complete it in time for his publisher’s plan to bring out a complete collection of his work.

During his lifetime, Shiga moved house more than 20 times, which inspired him to write stories connected with these places, including KINOSAKI NI TE (At Cape Kinosaki), SASAKI NO BAAI (In the case of Sasaki), and WAKAI (Reconciliation). Admired as the patron saint of literature, he died in 1971 at the age of 88.

Shiga lived in Sendokoji, Kamakura (now Yukinoshita) in 1915, the year after his marriage.