内容紹介
Japanese literary history usually classifies Koda Rohan as an idealist writer, and the three stories included in this anthology belong to this genre. The Five-Storied Pagoda, one of Koda's best-known works, is the moving account of a misunderstood carpenter who has been inspired to undertake the construction of a pagoda by himself. It is not merely a story of individualism, however, for the religious implications of such a task are profound. Encounter with a Skull concerns a fortuitous meeting of two souls not necessarily ordained by karuma. The multiple of processes of enlightenment are perceptively depicted in this errie tale. The last story, The Bearded Samurai, is an historical novella whose setting is the sixteenth-century battle of Nagashino between the forces of Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu and those of Takeda Katsuyori. Here, the human side of the warrior and a realistic view of the samurai are delinedated.
著者について
Koda Rohan (1867-1947) was born in Tokyo. Although he was an avid reader in his youth, his family's financial circumstances did not allow him a formal higher education. In 1884, he began working as a telegrapher in Hokkaido, but drawn to the bustling Japanese literary world in Tokyo, he left the job after three years to return to the capital. An introduction to the works of Ihara Saikaku and others launched a literary career that would span six decades. His early works were idealistic and then realistic fiction. Later, scholarly treatises on Japanese and Chinese classics eared him Ph.D in literature from Kyoto Imperial University.