Kōda Rohan: Life and Major Works

Born in 1867 in Shitaya, Edo (now part of Tokyo); his real name was Shigeyuki. He took a post as a telegraph operator in Hokkaido, but unable to suppress his ambition to write, he quit and returned alone to Tokyo. In 1889 he made his literary debut with "Fūryūbutsu" ("The Elegant Buddha"), depicting a sculptor's love and faith, and followed it with the dignified classical-style prose of "Gojū no Tō" ("The Five-Storied Pagoda") and "Hitokuchi Ken" ("The One-Bite Sword"), winning acclaim in short order. Idealistic, and grounded in a broad Eastern erudition, his style was often paired with the realism of Ozaki Kōyō, and the literary world of the 1890s came to be called the "Kōro era," combining the first characters of their names. Later he set fiction aside, devoting himself to writing that drew on his encyclopedic learning: the historical biography "Unmei" ("Destiny"), textual studies of Bashō and Genroku-era literature, and annotated commentaries on Chinese classics. He received the first Order of Culture. He died in 1947 at the age of 80. His eldest daughter was the essayist Kōda Aya.