#have been valiantly not posting every thought-driven-by-delving-into-japanese-literary-canon to tumblr. however. gestures so so so wildly

[blackwaves]

ignore the sloppy underlining but screencapping this all just to say it is literally fascinating to touch nakajima's life in a biographical sense for even a second and immediately see where asagiri is coming from. beyond the meditations on and querying about life and existence that are a prominent (!!) theme in nakajima's body of work— the reference to nakajima's opposition to the i-novel is fascinating when thrown next to dazai's mastery of it and the way akutagawa cut himself open on the genre.

from "A Japanese Writer in Micronesia: Nakajima Atsushi's Experiences of 1941-42", Nobuko Miyama Ochner