Between Nostalgia and Emancipation: Chinese Literary Allusions and the Crisis of Authenticity in Mori Ōgai’s The Wild Goose (1911–1913)

This article explores how Mori Ōgai’s novella The Wild Goose (Gan, serialized 1911–1913; published 1915) uses allusions to late imperial Chinese fiction to indirectly illuminate a “crisis of authenticity” in modern Japan. I argue that Ōgai establishes a nuanced dialogue between premodern Chinese narratives centered on “passion/desire” (qing) and contemporaneous Meiji- era debates on desire, marriage, and women’s social roles. The novella stages a collision between its male characters, who nostalgically misinterpret the heroine through the idealized lens of Ming-Qing love stories, and the heroine’s own burgeoning modern consciousness. While her quest for emancipation is driven by an authentic, lived passion, the male gaze reduces her to a “sentimental and fatalistic” literary archetype. Drawing on Ōgai’s critical essays and personal marginalia, this article shows how he uses this tension to forge an alternative literary model that questions both inherited Confucian morality and early Meiji “Enlightenment” agendas. This approach clarifies Ōgai’s sustained revaluation of Chinese fiction—and its emotionally charged depictions of desire—as a vital resource for navigating the contradictions of modernity.