Izumi Kyōka

Izumi Kyōka (born Nov. 4, 1873, Kanazawa, Japan—died Sept. 7, 1939, Tokyo) was a prolific Japanese writer who created a distinctive, often supernatural, fictional world.

Kyōka was born into a family of provincial artists and artisans. He went to Tokyo in 1890, hoping to be accepted as a disciple of Ozaki Kōyō, the leader of the literary scene at that time, but he was too shy to announce his presence. The next year he summoned up the courage to meet Kōyō and was immediately taken in as a houseboy. He lived with Kōyō until 1894. In return for cleaning the house and performing errands, he was given careful instruction by Kōyō, who went over every word in Kyōka’s manuscripts.

Kyōka’s first successful work, “Giketsu kyōketsu” (1894; “Noble Blood, Heroic Blood”), is melodramatic and implausible, but the characters are so vivid that the story was easily turned into a play. “Yakō junsa” (1895; “Night Patrolman”) and “Gekashitsu” (1895; “Surgical Room”) are short works that depict persons who are so moved by their convictions that they perform unbelievable acts of self-sacrifice. Kōya hijiri (1900; “The Holy Man of Mount Kōya”) gives full play to Kyōka’s fascination with the weird and the mysterious.

In 1899 Kyōka met a geisha whom he later married. In Yushima mōde (1899; “Worship at Yushima”), one of his most popular works, he described the world of the geisha, which reappeared in important works such as Onna keizu (1907; “A Woman’s Pedigree”) and “Uta andon” (1910; “A Song Under Lanterns”; Eng. trans. “The Song of the Troubadour”). Kyōka remained aloof from contemporary changes in literary taste, writing for devoted followers and refusing to abandon his highly individual art. Japanese Gothic Tales (1996), translated into English by Charles Shirō Inouye, contains four of Kyōka’s stories together with an extended discussion of his art.