Yu Xuanji and Other Stories and Essays

Yu Xuanji is beautiful, gifted, and known throughout Chang’an for her poetry. When she is accused of murder, her fame becomes the center of a startling story of desire, jealousy, and punishment. Mori Ōgai follows her life through teachers, lovers, poems, and the historical sources he consulted.

This collection also presents Who Is Ōgai Gyoshi?, a sharp first-person account of the literary reputation that threatened to obscure the author’s medical and official work, and Professor Teiken, a remembrance of a scholar whose learning stood between Eastern and Western cultures. The concluding story, Rat Hill, begins at a lavish Tokyo housewarming and leads through a wartime recollection toward an unsettling night.

All four works appear in their supplied order in this complete new English translation. Chinese poems, the historical bibliography, and the concluding newspaper report remain intact. Explanatory notes clarify names, textual problems, period language, and publication details. AI-assisted translation.