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Nagai Kafu. During the Rains and Flowers in the Shade. Lane Dunlop, tr. Stanford, Ca. Stanford University Press. 1994. xviii + 223 pages. $37.50 ($13.95 paper). ISBN 0-804-72259-5.
"How I love the Ukiyoe!" Kafu wrote. "The print of the courtesan who has sold herself to the cruel life for ten years so that she may help her parents--it makes me want to weep." The "floating world" depicted in the popular art of the Edo Period (1603-1868) held an enduring fascination for Nagai Kafu (1879-1959; Nagai is his surname, Kafu his pen name). When publicizing one of his early works, he noted his intention to evoke images of Utamaro's voluptuous women.
Like Edo woodblock prints, the demimonde dominated Kafu's art. The novelettes During the Rains and Flowers in the Shade do not, however, call up Kafu's romantic view of the past. Here are no pretty gardens or latticed doors, only dark alleys where "at high noon ancient rats the size of weasels went about their business at will." Neither are there any refined courtesans, only vulgar geishas and what the author regarded as a westernized form of unlicensed prostitute, the cafe waitress. A lifelong denizen of Tokyo's pleasure quarters and one who was always unhappy in the present, Kafu was critical of the deterioration of his surroundings. Yet he does not judge but only describes the debased lives of his characters.
During the Rains (Tsuyu no atosaki, 1931) is the more interesting of the two short novels. The central...