Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

Nagai Kafu – Who He?

Well, it’s Sunday, and I asked myself if, for once, I might forget about my onerous duties as a writer and just relax a bit. I haven’t really done that so far today, but if I get a little time after writing this entry in my blog, I know the perfect person with whom to relax. That person is Nagai Kafu.


Nagai Kafu is one of my favourite writers. I have yet to meet another human being who counts Kafu as one of their favourite writers, which is a fact both gratifying and rather lonely. At present I am re-reading Mishima’s The Decay of the Angel in the original, and it has occurred to me frequently just how strongly influenced I have been by Mishima in my own writing. But, since few people actually read Mishima, no one seems to notice this influence. It’s there clear as day, mind you.


I have been similarly influenced by Kafu, but if I were to try and pin down that influence in my work, it would be rather a difficult matter. That is perhaps because Kafu himself is so hard to pin down as a writer. What exactly is it that forms his appeal? I do not know if I can answer that question, but I hope I can give a hint or two here.


Kafu is, to me, the gentleman of leisure par excellence. Kafu (nee Sokichi) was born in 1879 in the Koishikawa district of Tokyo. His family was well to do – his father being a high-ranking bureaucrat – but Kafu was of a rebellious nature. From an early age he began to frequent such quarters of the city as were the haunts of actors, artists, geisha and all other such denizens of the demimonde that were execrated by the Confucian values of his family. In the year 1899, at the age of twenty, his first story, ‘Misty Night’ was published, and, in secret he apprenticed himself to a professional storyteller, or ‘rakugoka’. Rakugo is the Japanese art of reciting comic monologues. The next year, also in secret, he apprenticed himself to a playwright at the Kabuki Theatre. Thus he became steeped in the elegant dissipations and shadowy arts of the Edo Period.


In 1903, however, Kafu was sent to the United States of America. His father, apparently, hoped that an American education might do something for his wayward son. During his four years in America he gathered together the material that was to become Tales of America. His experiences there, as one of the first Japanese to travel to the West, gave him something of the cosmopolitan taste lacking in his contemporaries. Being a devotee of French literature, Kafu made sure he did not return directly to Japan, but came back via France, where he spent, against his father’s wishes, almost a year. There he composed his Tales of France, which were banned upon publication, because of certain sections that were deemed to be liable to corrupt the public morals.




Well, you’re probably beginning to get the picture by now. Think elegance and decadence and you can’t go too far wrong. Of course, I have no intention of writing a detailed biography here, only to offer a few stray thoughts.




If Mishima’s prose is as vivid and brilliant as the colours of a Chinese temple, Kafu’s prose reminds me instead of sunlight shining through the paper panels of a Japanese sliding door. It seems gentle, subdued and monotonous, with a certain sadness about it. But what at first seems a monotone reveals itself gradually as something sophisticated and multi-layered, with a mysterious flavour that lingers stronger and stronger after the first taste.


When I think of Kafu, I think of the Japanese word ‘shibui’. The fact is, I am still not sure of the meaning of this word, and no matter how many times it is explained to me, I still cannot say with confidence that I understand. But I have an impression of it’s meaning, and to give that impression substance, I refer to Kafu. Shibui refers to taste in art and in general, which is not obvious and brightly coloured, but is somewhat more restrained. It is often a word that is associated with an older generation. If a young person is called shibui, it is usually because their taste is like that of someone older than they. I like to think of it as ‘geezer cool’. Take an old geezer, make him unfeasibly elegant and cool, and there you have a personification of ‘shibui’ – IE Nagai Kafu.


When I write, I have a ritual to get me in the right mood. That ritual involves the brewing of green tea with a delicate little tea set I purchased in a teashop near Kyoto. As I pour the boiling water into the vessel for cooling the water, then, after some minutes, pour it into the ‘houhin’ where the green leaves of tea are nestled, and replace the lid, waiting for it to steep, I like to imagine that Kafu might have had a similar ritual as he sat before his ink-stone. In all forms of elegant leisure, and especially those either decadent or literary, I seem to sense the ghost of Kafu.




I have a favourite photograph of Kafu. I don’t expect I’ll be able to find it on the Internet. It shows Kafu quite late on in his life, though I don’t know exactly how old he is in the photo. He is kneeling on the floor in traditional Japanese style, though he is wearing a western suit. His shirt is unbuttoned at the neck, and there is no tie. His glasses are round and black-framed. He is smiling broadly, and exposing a gap in his front teeth where two or three teeth are missing. What I love about this photo is the fact that he so clearly does not give a damn about his missing teeth. That’s hard to imagine in this age of Hollywood actors for whom capped teeth are more or less mandatory (I remember how upset I was when Bowie sacrificed his wonderfully crooked teeth to this trend). Anyway, I look at this photo of Kafu, and, though my understanding of the word ‘shibui’ is not great enough for me to use it with confidence here, I think to myself, now, there’s a geezer!