Naoya Shiga - Literary Career

Literary Career

While Shiga was at the Gakushuin he became friends with Saneatsu Mushanokōji and Kinoshita Rigen. His literary career began with a handwritten literary magazine Boya ("Perspective"), which was circulated within their literary group at the school. In 1910 Shiga contributed the story Abashiri made ("To Abashiri") to the first issue of the literary magazine Shirakaba ("White Birch").

In longer works, Shiga generally adhered to the indigenous I Novel literary form, which uses the author's subjective recollection of his own experiences, but he established his reputation with a number of short stories, including Kamisori ("The Razor", 1910), Seibei no hyotan ("Seibei and the Gourd", 1913) and Manazuru ("Manazuru", 1920). These were followed by novels, including Otsu Junkichi (1912), Wakai ("Reconciliation", 1917), and his major work, An'ya Koro ("A Dark Night's Passing", 1921–1937), which was serialized in the radical socialist magazine Kaizō.

Shiga's terse style influenced many later writers, and was praised by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and Agawa Hiroyuki. However, other contemporaries, notably Dazai Osamu, were strongly critical of this "sincere" style.

During his lifetime Shiga moved house more than 20 times. He wrote stories connected with most of the places he lived in, including Kinosaki ni te ("At Cape Kinosaki") and Sasaki no bai ("In the case of Sasaki"). He lived in the hot spring resort town of Atami, Shizuoka from the war years onwards. Frequent visitors to his house included the writer Hirotsu Kazuo and the film director Yasujirō Ozu.