Tracing Mori Ogai in Leipzig

Liebigstraße is the street on which the Leipzig University Hospital, where Mori Ogai studied medical hygiene, is located and on which a pension he went for meals used to be located.

Over Christmas, I had the opportunity to go to Germany for two weeks to spend the holiday with my family. Over the trip, I kept a copy of Japan’s first great modern author Mori Ogai’s Deutschlandtagebuch 1884 – 1888 (Doitsunikki, Germany Diary)[1] as travel literature, and went to Leipzig on December 20th to see what I could trace of him there. Leipzig was the first city Mori lived and went to university in after coming to Germany as a military doctor to study hygiene. After returning to Japan, for a Japanese language school application I wrote the following paper about Mori Ogai, which I’ve edited to post here. I’ve included pictures of some of the places I found that were mentioned in his diary.

Hatsubutai II – Yuki

Closing the fan at the end of the performance. The two people behind me were a part of the chorus, the person to the left is my teacher, Udaka Michishige.

On November 2nd, I went to Matsuyama in Shikoku for my Noh debut. One only gets one debut, and I wanted to make mine the best it could possibly be. However, after only a half year of lessons, there was a lot to pull together for a successful performance. All in all, though, the experience was amazing, including also meeting my Sensei’s students from across Japan, being allowed backstage during a full professional performance, and watching a new Noh play Sensei had written.