Customer Reviews

The Wild Goose (Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies (Hardback))

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One small incident CAN be made into an entire novel, as Ogai Mori shows us here. The actual action in The Wild Goose is quite small, even insignificant. But the way Ogai informs us of every thought of every character more than makes up for it. What I found to be truly compelling was the point of view -- the narrator is the best friend of Okada, one of the main characters. Just when it appears that the narrator knows way too much about what Otama (the girl) was thinking, he goes and leaves us with a mystery at the end that brings about what I thought was excellent closure. I would say that the main theme of this novel is "zero reciprocity" -- those of the characters who are in love are never truly loved back, like Otama, who silently longs for Okada, or even Suezo, the man who has taken Otama for his mistress. In this novel, people lie, people cheat, people hide the truth. And people never say what they truly feel. Just like real life. An excellent story.

This was a wonderful little book and like many other Japanese novels such as Junichiro Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters very litle seems to actually happen. The thing it alot does happen One just has to search for the happenings in the elegent words of Mori Ogai. At first it seems that the main character of the book is the Narrator's best friend Okada who is a wel liked medical student. we soon learn that Okada has been noticed by and is noticing a beautiful woman named Otama who is in fact a mistress of Suezo a money lender. The main character, however, seems to be Otama. We see her gpoo through evert day trying to figure out how to talk the man she loves. It is pretty much that simple, but the reader is deeply affected by this book. I know I was, and i'll never eat makerel boiled in miso

This is a tale of complex people who in their interaction find life to be much more complicated than they had expected or feared. Suezo, a moneylender, is tired of life with his nagging, highly imperfect wife, so he decides to take a mistress. Otama, the only child of a widower merchant, wishes that she could provide for her aging father, and when an obviously rich man asks her to be his mistress, a new hope beckons. When Otama learns the truth about Suezo, she feels betrayed, and hopes to find a hero to rescue her. When Otama meets Okada, a medical student, she feels that she might indeed have met her hero.

This is a bittersweet story, a story of hope and unfairness. The wild geese wish only for freedom, but sometimes others use them for purposes they cannot imagine. Published between 1911 and 1913, this book gives an excellent peek into the society of early modern Japan.

This book is an achingly beautiful story, and a fascinating historical document. I highly recommend it.

If you've ever lived through a possibility unrealized or a desire unfulfilled, you'll appreciate this incredibly subtle story.

The narrator follows the hopeless attraction between a beautiful young woman, mistress of a despised moneylender, and a privileged medical student with a classical education. The setting is Meiji Japan in 1880, a time when people still honored their parents' wishes and kept to the path ordained by their social position.

Ogai captured a depth of personality in his characters that brought a new realism to Japanese literature. His dandified soft-spoken moneylender, alternately stingy and sentimental, is an original. His heroine Otama, exquisite as a caged bird, seems unlikely to escape her claustrophobic situation. And the medical student is a thoroughly likeable fellow.

From one point of view, not a lot happens. But for me the narrative, despite its realism, has a quality not unlike the slow, heartrending movements of Japanese classical dance. Worlds of emotion are expressed in the spare, almost offhand details of the plot.

I read the introduction after the novel, and it further enhanced my appreciation of Ogai's achievement. Burton Watson gives an insightful biographical sketch of Mori Ogai and explains how the novel would have impacted the Japanese readers of his day. The Wild Goose, Ogai's most popular novel, was serialized between 1911 and 1913.

This is a wonderful book. I will never again watch the flight of wild geese without thinking of the graceful Otama.