The Dancing Girl — Summary and Characters
A young man's love, lost in Berlin
- Author
- Mori Ōgai
- Published
- January 1890
- First appeared in
- Kokumin no Tomo
- Form
- Novel
- Genres
- Romance
- Psychological
- Length
- 16,190 characters
- Reading time
- About 32 min
- Orthography
- Modern script and kana
About this work
The short story with which Mori Ōgai entered the literary world, published in the magazine Kokumin no Tomo in January 1890. Drawing on his own years studying in Germany, it recounts, in the elegant classical style of a letter, the doomed love between an elite young official and a German dancer. It is still valued as the first fully realized work of Japanese romanticism.
Summary
Ōta Toyotarō, sent by official order to study in Germany, finds himself, through his contact with the free spirit of the West rather than through the study of law, gradually turning away from an official career toward a path of his own. One day he meets Elise, a poor dancing girl weeping in the street in her distress, and helping her leads to their becoming lovers, for which he is dismissed from his post. Living with Elise and keeping himself by work as a newspaper correspondent, Toyotarō is given a chance to be reinstated as an interpreter for Count Amakata through the good offices of his friend Aizawa Kenkichi. Travelling with the minister to Russia, Toyotarō is torn between his love for Elise and his own advancement, and at last resolves to go home and return to office. Learning of his change of heart, the pregnant Elise is so shocked by Aizawa's news that she loses her reason. Toyotarō leaves the means of living to Elise's mother, and sets out for home carrying a wound that will not heal and a resentment against Aizawa that will not go.
Characters
- Ōta Toyotarō A young official sent by order to study in Germany. The narrator and protagonist
- Elise A poor dancing girl. She becomes Toyotarō's lover and loses her reason while carrying his child
- Aizawa Kenkichi Toyotarō's friend. He opens the way back to office, and tells Elise the truth in Toyotarō's stead
- Count Amakata The minister who makes much of Toyotarō as his interpreter
Chapter-by-chapter synopsis
The app covers this work chapter by chapter (full text in the app).
- 1. About This Work
- 2. Main Characters
- 3. Supporting Characters
- 4. Confession Aboard Ship — At the Port of Saigon
- 5. The Star Pupil in Berlin — The Awakening of the “True Self”
- 6. The Encounter on Klosterstrasse and His Dismissal
- 7. Poor but Happy Days — Life as a Correspondent
- 8. Reunion at the Kaiserhof and the Journey to Russia
- 9. The Ending — A Snowy Night and “Paranoia”
- 10. Key Motifs and Foreshadowing
The opening (original text)
The coal is long since loaded. Around the table of the second-class saloon it is very quiet, and the brightness of the incandescent lamps is wasted. Tonight the card party that gathers here every evening are lodging at the hotel, and I am the only one left aboard. It was five years ago; and when, my usual wish granted and the official order to go abroad received, I came as far as this port of Saigon, there was not one thing I saw or heard that was not new to me, and how many thousand words a day did I write in the travel pieces that came as my brush pleased? They were carried in the papers of the day and made much of by the world; but thinking of it today — childish thoughts, presumptuous talk beyond my station, and even ordinary plants and animals and minerals, and manners and customs, set down as though they were rarities — what must anyone of sense have made of them? This time, when I set out, the notebook I bought to keep a diary in is still blank; and whether it is that in studying in Germany I have acquired a certain temper of nil admirari — no, there is another reason for it.
The Dancing Girl by Mori Ōgai (Aozora Bunko)
The ending (original text)
From then on she made no more disturbance; but the working of her mind is almost wholly stopped, and in her idiocy she is like an infant. When I showed her to a doctor he said it was a case of what is called paranoia, brought on suddenly by excessive distress of mind, and that there is no hope of a cure. When they meant to put her into the asylum at Dalldorf she wept and cried out and would not have it, and afterwards she kept those swaddling clothes about her, taking them out again and again to look at, and sobbing when she looked. She does not leave my sickbed, but even this seems to be without any understanding. Only now and then she says, as if remembering, "Medicine, medicine." My own illness is entirely cured. How many times did I hold Elise's living corpse and pour out a thousand streams of tears? When I set out to return east with the minister, I arranged with Aizawa to give Elise's mother capital enough to keep a slender living, and asked them also to see to the birth of the child left in the poor madwoman's womb. Ah, such a good friend as Aizawa Kenkichi is not easily to be found in this world. And yet to this day there remains in my mind one point of hatred for him.
The Dancing Girl by Mori Ōgai (Aozora Bunko)
Famous passages
The loading of the coal is now at last finished.
This celebrated opening line is written aboard ship, at a port of call on the voyage home. From the stillness of this single sentence begins Toyotarō's remorseful confession, having left his lover behind in a foreign land.
Ah, a good friend such as Aizawa Kenkichi one shall surely never find again in this world. And yet, to this day, a single point of hatred for him remains lodged in my mind.
The final line. A poignant close that places, at the very end of this confession, a hatred for the friend who was his benefactor and yet also tore him from his lover.
Read the original
The original Japanese text is available at Aozora Bunko, and the app downloads the same text for its vertical-text reader.
More by this author
- The Wild Geese September 1911
- The Abe Family January 1913
- Sanshō the Steward January 1915