Overview

Nogami Yaeko's novel The Labyrinth deals with the doubts and dilemmas of leftwing intellectuals before and during World War II. Rich in social detail and profound in its psychology, it follows the political and sentimental evolution of the protagonist Kanno Shōzō from a humiliating recantation of his socialist creed to a problematic participation in Japan's war against China. Nogami Yaeko (1885-1985) was Japan's longest-lived woman writer and has an assured place in the history of Japanese fiction. Winner of the prestigious Nomiuri prize, The Labyrinth was immediately recognized as a major critical contribution to the understanding of Japanese political and intellectual history.

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In the years following the Second World War long novels were in vogue in Japan. Perhaps writers felt length was needed to explain what had gone so wrong. One of the longest was The Labyrinth (Meiro, 1957) by Nogami Yaeko (1895-1985), an important and distinguished writer who has barely appeared in English before. With this first translation of her gargantuan novel, there is now plenty of Nogami for Anglophone readers to enjoy... The story concerns Kanno Shozo, the second son of a relatively prosperous Kyushu sake brewery family, who despite his record of opposition to Japanese fascism will eventually be drafted and sent to China to fight at the end of the Second World War. Riddled with doubt, he eventually tries to desert. Japanese critics have long treasured The Labyrinth as an anti-war novel, no doubt in part because there have been so few Japanese novels to feature a soldier with a conscience... Maya and Anthony Mortimer are to be congratulated for taking on the challenge of this novel, which is well regarded in Japan if now seldom read. The large cast of characters - new ones are continually introduced - is managed for the reader with a helpful list. John Whittier Treat, What to serve at tea , TLS 9 Jan 2015

Author Information

A prolific and long-lived novelist, Nogami Yaeko (1885-1985) is noted for her historical fiction and for her left-wing stance in the postwar period. Among her major works, Oishi Yoshio (1926) takes a critical look at the samurai tradition and Hideyoshi and Rikyu (1963) examines the tense relation between the artist and his tyrant patron. The Labyrinth (1958) is her most ambitious novel. Maya Mortimer (Ph.D. Geneva, 2000) has taught at the universities of Zürich and Fribourg (Switzerland). She has published a study of the Shirakaba group, Meeting the Sensei: the Role of the Master in Shirakaba Writers (Brill, 2000). Anthony Mortimer (Ph.D. Case Western Reserve University, 1971) is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He has published translations from Italian (Dante, Petrarch, Michelangelo, Pirandello), French (Villon) and German (Angelus Silesius).

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