Yumeno Kyūsaku

Yumeno Kyūsaku
Yumeno Kyūsaku
Born	(1889-01-04)4 January 1889 Fukuoka, Fukuoka prefecture, Japan
Died	11 March 1936(1936-03-11) (aged 47) Tokyo, Japan
Occupation	Writer
Genre	detective stories, science fiction, horror
Literary movement	romanticism, surrealism

In this Japanese name, the family name is Yumeno, Sugiyama.

Yumeno Kyūsaku (夢野久作, 4 January 1889 – 11 March 1936) was the pen name of the early Shōwa period Japanese author Sugiyama Taidō. The pen name literally means "a person who always dreams". He wrote detective novels and is known for his avant-gardism and his surrealistic, wildly imaginative and fantastic,^[1] even bizarre narratives. His son is Sugiyama Tatsumaru, the Green Father of India.

Early life

Kyūsaku was born in Fukuoka city, Fukuoka prefecture as Sugiyama Naoki. His father, Sugiyama Shigemaru, was a major figure in the pre-war ultranationalist organization, the Genyōsha. After graduating from Shuyukan he attended the Literature Department at Keio University, but dropped out^[1] on orders from his father, and returned home to take care of the family farm. In 1926 he decided to become a Buddhist priest, but after a couple of years in the monastery, he returned home again as Sugiyama Taido. By this time, he had developed a strong interest in the traditional Japanese drama form of Noh, with its genre of ghost stories and supernatural events. He found employment as a freelance reporter for the Kyushu Nippō newspaper (which later became the Nishinippon Shimbun), while writing works of fiction on the side.

Literary career

Kyūsaku’s first success was a nursery tale Shiraga Kozō (White Hair Boy, 1922), which was largely ignored by the public. It was not until his first novella, Ayakashi no Tsuzumi (Apparitional Hand Drum, 1924) in the literary magazine Shin-Seinen that his name became known.

His subsequent works include Binzume jigoku (Hell in the Bottles, 1928), Kori no hate (End of the Ice, 1933) and his most significant novel Dogra Magra (ドグラマグラ, 1935), which is considered a precursor of modern Japanese science fiction^[2] and was adapted for a 1988 movie.^[3]

Dogra Magra exemplifies modern Japanese avant-garde gothic literature. In the story, the protagonist/narrator wakes up in a hospital with amnesia. He finds out that he was the subject of an experiment by a now-dead psychiatrist, and the doctors are working to bring back his memories. It is not clear whether he was a psychotic killer or the victim of a strange psychological experiment, but it is told that he killed his mother and wife and that he inherited his psychotic tendencies from an insane ancestor. This novel is strongly influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis and through Yumeno's contacts there, provides considerable historical insight into the development of the study of psychoanalysis at Kyushu Imperial University.^[2]

Kyūsaku died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1936 while talking with a visitor at home.

Works in translation

English translation

Short stories

"Love After Death" (original title: Shigo no Koi) (Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan, 1913-1938, University of Hawaii Press, 2008)
"Hell in a Bottle" (original title: Binzume Jigoku) (Three-Dimensional Reading: Stories of Time and Space in Japanese Modernist Fiction, 1911-1932, University of Hawaii Press, 2013)

Essay

"Terrifying Tokyo" (Tokyo stories: a literary stroll, University of California Press, 2002)

French translation

Novel

Dogra Magra Philippe Picquier (2003). ISBN 2-87730-645-3

Spanish translation