Yes, Nagai Kafū (1879–1959) is a quintessential example of the lyrical at twilight—a writer deeply attuned to impermanence, nostalgia, and the slow disappearance of a world he cherished. His works, particularly Sumidagawa (1909) and Bokutō Kidan (1937), capture a melancholic wandering through a vanishing Tokyo, making him one of the great flâneurs of Japanese literature.
Why is Nagai Kafū Lyrical?
1. He Walks Through a Fading World
• Much like Matthew Scudder in Manhattan or Zatoichi in Edo, Kafū’s protagonists are wanderers, drifting through the old geisha districts, the narrow alleys, the backstreets of Tokyo.
• His Tokyo is not the modernizing metropolis of the Meiji government, but the decaying remnants of Edo’s floating world (ukiyo).
• His writing is a dérive through the city, where the act of walking becomes a form of resistance against modernization, Westernization, and bureaucratic control.
2. He Exists at the Margin of the Epic
• The epic of modernization was unfolding in Meiji and Taishō Japan—industrial expansion, nationalism, militarization.
• But Kafū resisted it, turning away from grand narratives of progress and instead romanticizing the disappearing, the ephemeral, the forgotten.
• His works are filled with prostitutes, failed artists, and lonely men—people who do not fit into the epic of history.
3. His Writing is Hauntingly Impermanent
• Like Bashō’s haibun, Kafū’s writing often blends travelogues, fiction, and personal reflection, making his texts fluid and fragmented rather than structured and monumental.
• He evokes nostalgia, longing, and transient beauty (mono no aware), much like Du Fu wandering through war-torn Tang China.
4. He is a Literary Exile in His Own Country
• Kafū traveled to America and France, but when he returned, he found himself alienated from modern Japan.
• He lived in self-imposed exile in old Tokyo, resisting official literary circles and state propaganda.
• Much like Walter Benjamin in exile or Osip Mandelstam under Stalin, Kafū’s writing is a lament for a world disappearing before his eyes.
Conclusion: Kafū as the Lyrical Flâneur of a Dying Edo
• If Bashō wandered Edo Japan, and Scudder walked Manhattan, then Kafū walked Tokyo as it was being torn apart by modernization.
• He represents the lyrical refusal to fully belong to history, much like Saigyō, Camus, or Winnicott in their respective fields.
• He documents twilight—not through epic storytelling but through walking, observing, and lingering in the margins.
Would you say that Nagai Kafū is a van lifer without the van, drifting through a world he cannot change, preserving it only in memory and prose?
