Not a Song Like Any Other: An Anthology of Writings by Mori Ogai

The literary writings of Mori Ogai (1862-1922), one of the giant figures of the Meiji period, have become increasingly well known to readers of English through a number of recent translations of his novels and short stories. Ogai was more than a writer of fiction, however. He has long been regarded in Japan as one of the most influential intellectual and artistic figures of his period, possessing a wide range of enthusiasms and concerns, many developed through his early European experiences. Not a Song Like Any Other attempts to reveal the full range of Ogai’s creative endeavor, providing trenchant examples of his remarkable range, from dramatist and storyteller to poet and polemicist, all translated into English for the first time. The first of seven parts, The Author Himself, offers a variety of self portraits and other insights into Ogai’s character through his essays - laconic, ironic, detached - written over the course of his career. Mori Ogai in Germany reveals his responses to living in Germany in the 1880s and seeing for the first time how his country was being interpreted from the outside. It includes his celebrated and spirited defense of his country, originally publi