author
Gensai Murai
1864–1927
A hugely popular Japanese writer of the Meiji and Taishō eras, he is best remembered for lively, wide-ranging fiction that reached a mass audience. His work mixed entertainment with sharp observation, and Shokudōraku became one of the best-known bestsellers of its time.
1 Audiobook
Kibun Daizin; Or, From Shark-Boy to Merchant Prince
by Gensai Murai
About the author
Born in Toyohashi on January 26, 1864, Murai Gensai was a Japanese journalist and novelist whose real name was Murai Yutaka. Sources on his life describe him as one of the standout popular writers of the Meiji and Taishō periods, with a career that produced more than 60 novels.
He is especially known for Shokudōraku (Gourmet Pleasure or The Joy of Eating), first serialized in the Hōchi Shimbun in 1903. The novel became an extraordinary bestseller and is widely treated as his best-known work. Modern accounts also note that his fiction and essays could be strikingly forward-looking, and he has even been described as an early pioneer of Japanese science-fiction-like writing.
From 1904 until his death on July 30, 1927, he lived in what is now Yaezaki-chō in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa. His memory remained strong enough there that the city later created a park and an annual festival in his honor, a fitting legacy for a writer once praised as a leading popular author of his day.