Yumeno Kyūsaku

In this Japanese name, the surname is Yumeno, Sugiyama.

Yumeno Kyūsaku
Yumeno Kyūsaku
Native name	夢野 久作
Born	Sugiyama Naoki (杉山 直樹) (1889-01-04)4 January 1889 Fukuoka, Japan
Died	11 March 1936(1936-03-11) (aged 47) Tokyo, Japan
Pen name	Kaijaku Ranpei Kagutsuchi Midori Kakumi Dontarō Unsui (雲水) Hōen (萠円)
Occupation	Journalist, detective literature writer
Genre	Detective stories, science fiction, horror
Literary movement	Romanticism, surrealism
Notable works	Dogra Magra
Relatives	Sugiyama Shigemaru (father) Sugiyama Tatsumaru (son)

Yumeno Kyūsaku (夢野 久作, 4 January 1889 – 11 March 1936) was the pen name of Sugiyama Yasumichi (杉山 泰道), an early Shōwa period Japanese author, Zen priest, post office director and sub-lieutenant. The pen name roughly means "a person who always dreams". His Dharma name was Goshin-in Gin'en Taidō-koji (悟真院吟園泰道居士). He wrote detective novels and is known for his avant-gardism and his surrealistic, wildly imaginative and fantastic, even bizarre narratives. His eldest son, Sugiyama Tatsumaru, was known as the Green Father of India for spending billions of yen on reforestation.

Early life

Yumeno was born in Fukuoka city, Fukuoka prefecture as Sugiyama Naoki. His father, Sugiyama Shigemaru, was a major figure in the pre-war ultranationalist organization, the Genyōsha. After graduating from Shuyukan he attended the Literature Department at Keio University, but dropped out on orders from his father, and returned home to take care of the family farm. In 1926 he decided to become a Buddhist priest, but after a couple of years in the monastery, he returned home again as Sugiyama Yasumichi. By this time, he had developed a strong interest in the traditional Japanese drama form of Noh, with its genre of ghost stories and supernatural events. He found employment as a freelance reporter for the Kyushu Nippō newspaper (which later became the Nishinippon Shimbun), while writing works of fiction on the side.

Literary career

Kyūsaku's first success was a nursery tale Shiraga Kozō (White Hair Boy, 1922), which was largely ignored by the public. It was not until his first novella, Ayakashi no Tsuzumi (The Spirit Drum, 1924) in the literary magazine Shin-Seinen, that his name became known.

His subsequent works include Binzume jigoku (Hell in the Bottles, 1928), Kori no hate (End of the Ice, 1933), and his most significant novel Dogura Magura (Dogra Magra, 1935), which is considered a precursor of modern Japanese science fiction and was adapted for a 1988 movie directed by Toshio Matsumoto and starring Shijaku Katsura II, Hideo Murota, and Yōji Matsuda.

Dogra Magra exemplifies modern Japanese avant-garde gothic literature. In the story, the protagonist/narrator wakes up in a hospital with amnesia. He finds out that he was the subject of an experiment by a now-dead psychiatrist, and the doctors are working to bring back his memories. It is not clear whether he was a psychotic killer or the victim of a strange psychological experiment, but it is told that he killed his mother and wife and that he inherited his psychotic tendencies from an insane ancestor. The novel is strongly influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis and, through Yumeno's contacts there, provides considerable historical insight into the development of the study of psychoanalysis at Kyushu Imperial University.

Kyūsaku died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1936 while talking with a visitor at home.

Works in translation

English translation

Short stories

• "Love After Death" (original title: Shigo no Koi) (Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan, 1913-1938, University of Hawaii Press, 2008)
• "Hell in a Bottle" (original title: Binzume Jigoku) (Three-Dimensional Reading: Stories of Time and Space in Japanese Modernist Fiction, 1911-1932, University of Hawaii Press, 2013)
• "Hell in Bottles" (original title: Binzume Jigoku) (The Nashville Review, Volume 25, Vanderbilt University, 2018)
• "Building" (original title: Birudingu) (The Literary Review, Volume 60 No 2: Physics, Farleigh Dickinson University, 2017)

Novel

• "The Spirit Drum" (original title: Ayakashi no Tsuzumi) (Arigatai Books, 2019, translated by J.D. Wisgo)
• "Kaimu: A Collection of Disturbing Dreams" (original title: Kaimu) (Arigatai Books, 2021, translated by J.D. Wisgo)

Essay

• "Terrifying Tokyo" (included in Tokyo Stories: A Literary Stroll, University of California Press, 2002, translated by Lawrence Rogers)

French translation

Novel

• "Dogra Magra" Philippe Picquier (2003). ISBN 2-87730-645-3

Spanish translation

Short stories

• El infierno de las chicas [The hell of the girls] (in Spanish), Satori, 2014, ISBN 978-84-941920-7-4.

Polish translation

Short stories

• "Piekło w butelkach" (original title: Binzume Jigoku) (Tajfuny, 2021, translated by Andrzej Świrkowski)

Novel

• "Przeklęty bębenek" (original title: Ayakashi no tsuzumi) (Kirin, 2021, translated by Anna Grajny)

Russian translation

Novel

• Догра Магра (original title: Dogura Magura) (Издательство книжного магазина «Желтый двор», 2021, translated by Anna Slashcheva) ISBN 9785604534380

Further reading

• Yumeno, Kyūsaku. Nippon Tantei Shosetsu Zenshu (The Great Detective Stories of Japan) Vol. 4. Tokyo SogenSha (1984). ISBN 4-488-40004-3 (in Japanese)
• Bush, Laurence. Asian Horror Encyclopedia: Asian Horror Culture in Literature, Manga, and Folklore. Writer's Club Press (2001). ISBN 0-595-20181-4 (in English)
• Napier, Susan J. The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature. Routledge (1995). ISBN 0-415-12458-1 (in English)
• Clerici, Nathen. Dreams from Below: Yumeno Kyūsaku and Subculture Literature in Japan (2013)
• Clerici, Nathen (March 2019). "Yumeno Kyūsaku and the Spirit of the Local". Japanese Studies. 39: 75–94. doi:10.1080/10371397.2019.1576295. S2CID 151075354.

External links

• Works by or about Yumeno Kyūsaku at the Internet Archive
• Works by Yumeno Kyūsaku at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• J'Lit | Authors : Kyusaku Yumeno | Books from Japan (in English)
• e-texts of Kyūsaku's works at Aozora Bunko