Meisei Goto

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Meisei Gotō (後藤明生, Gotō Meisei^?, April 4, 1932–August 2, 1999), also known as Akio Gotō, was a Japanese author.

Goto was born in North Korea, but fled with his family to Kyūshū, Japan while in junior highschool. He studied Russian literature at Waseda University, with particular interest in Nikolai Gogol. He then worked at an advertising agency and a publishing house, before becoming a professional novelist in 1968.

[edit] Major prizes

1977 Hirabayashi Taiko Award for Yume katari (Dreams Speak)
1981 Tanizaki Prize for Yoshino-dayu (吉野大夫, The Courtesan Yoshino)

[edit] English translations

Shot By Both Sides (Hasamiuchi, 1973), trans. Tom Gill, Japanese Literature Publishing Project, 2005 list. Scheduled for publication in the united States by Counterpoint, fall 2008.

Plot summary from JLPP homepage (http://www.jlpp.jp/en/)

Shot by Both Sides (Hasamiuchi)

This stream-of-consciousness novel about a man seeking evidence of his own existence through recollection has been praised by critics in Japan for its unique style.

One evening, while standing around on a bridge waiting for a friend, the narrator looks at his overcoat and recalls Gogol's The Overcoat. Then he remembers himself twenty years earlier, when he came to Tokyo for the first time, wearing an old military overcoat his mother had given him. He starts to wonder where that coat might be now, and he decides to look for it. One day not long after that, in the hope of finding the garment, he visits the boarding house where he lived as a student, which leads him to the pawnbroker from whom he used to take out loans. While wandering around all day searching for his old coat, his mind turns to the various events of his life—North Korea, life in rural Japan, his student days, and so on. Walking by a movie theater, he thinks back on the time when he was a student and used to dress up as a soldier to do part-time propaganda work for the theater. Then old military songs spring to mind, then defeat in North Korea, then a high school friend and the prostitute this man introduced him to, and from this his student days when he would visit the red-light district in old-town Tokyo, and so on and so forth, his mind digressing from digressions, and then digressing further.

Ultimately, despite all his wandering around, the narrator never learns the whereabouts of his overcoat, and the story ends with him waiting on the same bridge he stood on earlier—waiting this time for a friend who has nothing to do with either the coat or life in rural Japan or anything else in the narrator’s past.

[edit] Selected works

Shiteki seikatsu, 1969.
Waraijigoku, 1969.
Nani?, 1970.
Kakarenai hōkoku, 1971.
Kankei, 1971.
En to daen no sekai, 1972.
Gotō Meisei shū, 1972.
Hasamiuchi (Attacked from Both Sides), 1973.
Yonjissai no Oburōmofu, 1973.
Fumbet suzakari no mufumbetsu, 1974.
Fushigi na temaneki, 1975.
Nemuri otoko no me, 1975.
Ōinaru mujun, 1975.
Omoigawa, 1975.
Ugetsu monogatari kikō, 1975.
Meguriai, 1976.
Hasamiuchi, 1977.
Waraizaka, 1977.
Yukikaeri, 1977.
Yume katari (Dreams Speak)
Sake neko ningen, 1978.
Torashima, 1978.
Yonjissai no Oburōmofu (四十歲のオブローモフ), Tōkyō : Ōbunsha, 1978.
Yume to yume no aida, 1978.
Hari no ana kara, 1979.
Uso no yō na nichijō, 1979.
Hachigatsu, 1980.
Ugetsu monogatari, Harusame monogatari, 1980.
Mieru sekai, mienai sekai, 1981.
Warai no hōhō : aruiwa Nikorai Gōgori (笑いの方法 : あるいはニコライゴーゴリ), Tōkyō : Chūō Kōronsha, 1981.
Yoshinodayu (吉野大夫), 1981.
Fukushū no jidai, Tōkyō : Fukutake Shoten, 1983.
Nanji no rinjin (汝の隣人), Tōkyō : Kawade Shobō Shinsha, 1983.
Shōsetsu ikani yomi ikani kaku ka, 1983.
Omocha no chi, chi, chi (おもちゃの知、知、知), Tōkyō : Tōjusha, 1984.
Bungaku ga kawaru toki (文学が変るとき), Tōkyō : Chikuma Shobō, 1987.
Kafuka no meikyū : Akumu no hōhō (カフカの迷宮 : 悪夢の方法 ), Tōkyō : Iwanami Shoten, 1987.
Memento mori : Watakushi no shokudō shujutsu taiken (メメントモリ : 私の食道手術体験), Tōkyō : Chūō Kōronsha, 1990.
Sukēpu gōto (スケープゴート), Tōkyō : Nihon Bungeisha, 1990.