Mari Mori


Mari Mori was a Japanese author, best known for writing male homosexual romances.

Early life and family

Mari Mori was born in Hongō, Tokyo. Her father was novelist Mori Ōgai.

Career

Mori won the Japan Essayist Club Award in 1957 for a collection of essays called My Father's Hat. She began a movement of writing about male homosexual passion in 1961 with A Lovers' Forest, 恋人たちの森, which won the Tamura Toshiko Prize. Later works include I Don't Go on Sundays and The Bed of Dead Leaves.
She was greatly influenced by her father; in A Lover's Forest, the older man can be seen as imbued with the same virtues and honor as she saw in her father. An older man and younger boy are trademarks of Mari Mori's work. The older man is extremely rich, powerful, wise, and spoils the younger boy. In The Lover's Forest, for example, the older man, Guido, is 38 or so, and Paulo is 17 or 18.. Paulo is extraordinarily beautiful, prone to lounge lazily, and has a lack of willpower in all but the field of his pleasure.. New York University Professor Keith Vincent has called her a "Japanese Electra", referring to the Electra complex counterpart put forth by Carl Jung to Sigmund Freud's Oedipal complex.
In 1975 her novel The Room Filled with Sweet Honey won the 3rd Izumi Kyōka Prize for Literature.

Personal life

Her first husband was Tamaki Yamada, an assistant professor of French literature and librarian at the Tokyo Imperial University who co-founded the University of Tokyo Buddhist Literature Department, whom she married in 1919 and divorced in 1927, having had two children. Her second husband was Akira Sato.
Mori Mari died of heart failure on 6 June 1987.

Selected works

Novels and essays

  • Chichi no Bōshi, 1957
  • Kutsu no Oto, 1958
  • Nōkaishoku no Sakana, 1959
  • Koibito-tachi no Mori, 1961
  • Kareha no Nedoko, 1962
  • Zeitaku Binbō, 1963
  • Kioku no E, 1968
  • Watashi no Bi no Sekai, 1968
  • Amai Mitsu no Heya, 1975

Posthumous publication

  • Best of Dokkiri Channel, 1994
  • Maria no Kimagure Kaki, 1995
  • Ma ri no Hitorigoto, 1997
  • Binbō Savarin, 1998
  • Boyaki to Ikari no Maria: Aru Henshū-sha e no Tegami, 1998
  • Maria no Unuborekagami, 2000
  • Maria no Kūsō Ryokō, 2006
  • Mori Mari: Watashi no Naka no Alice no Sekai, 2010
  • Kōcha to Bara no Hibi, 2016
  • Zeitaku Binbō no Osharejō, 2016
  • Kōfuku wa Tada Watashi no Heya no Naka dake ni, 2017
  • Kuroneko Juliet no Hanashi, 2017
  • Chichi to Watashi: Ren'ai no Yōna Mono, 2018

Collections

  • Mori Mari: Roman to Essay, 1983-1983
  • Mori Mari Complete Works, 1993-94

Illustrated books

  • Yōsei Sophie: Ishikawa Yōji Photobook, 1981
  • Watashi no Binanshi-ron, 1995