Nakajima Atsushi: Life and Major Works

Born in Yotsuya, Tokyo, in 1909. Raised in a family of Chinese-classics scholars, he graduated from the Japanese literature department of Tokyo Imperial University and taught at Yokohama Girls' High School while continuing to write. Afflicted throughout his life by chronic asthma, he took a post as a textbook compiler for the South Seas Bureau and went to Palau, partly for the sake of his health; the experience bore fruit in "Nantōtan" ("Tales of the Southern Islands") and other works. In 1942 he made his literary debut, drawing on Chinese classical sources, with "Sangetsuki" ("The Moon over the Mountain") and "Moji-ka" ("The Curse of Words"), published together as "Kotan" ("Old Tales"), but he died that same year of an asthma attack, at the young age of 33. His representative works — "Ri Ryō" ("Li Ling"), "Deshi" ("The Disciple"), "Meijinden" ("The Master Craftsman") — were all posthumously published, and, with their dignified, classically Chinese-inflected prose and their piercing gaze on human fate, he left a substantial mark on modern Japanese literature despite his short life.