Utatsu, but at a time when those areas were populated by This takes place near the Tenjin Bridge along theĪsano River and on Mt. Another of his Kanazawa stories is Kechou (“A Bird ofĪ Different Feather,” 1897). Life), is still possible today, though both places have changed in the years Met while intending to drown themselves (as Kyoka and a local woman did in real Heartvine,” 1937), and the old castle moat where two characters from this story Personal interest that some of his works are set in areas I might pass through everyĭay. And although I read his stories before moving here, I was drawn to them more deeply after becoming a resident of Kanazawa. I became interested in Kyoka’s work due to a somewhat unique situation: he’s from the Japanese city where I moved to several years ago and expect to live the rest of my life. Despite the short time he lived in Kanazawa, as well as the negative feelings he held toward the city, he set a number of his works there. Kyoka lived in Kanazawa until he was seventeen years old, and though he was forced to come back on a few occasions, his home thereafter became Tokyo – Japan’s literary center in his day and now – and for several years Zushi, on the Kanagawa coast, where he went with his wife, Ito Suzu, a former Kagurazaka geisha, to recover his health. As one might imagine, it was a time of great change throughout the country. Kyoka was born in Kanazawa in 1873, only twenty years after Japan was forced to open to the West after 250 years of seclusion.
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