The Wild Geese on Jin Ping Mei: “Once I found a Chinese-edition Jin Ping Mei at a secondhand bookstall and asked the owner the price. He said seven yen. [auto-translated]”
The Wild Geese on Mikawa Gofudoki: “What he was reading these days was the Mikawa Gofudoki. It had a great many volumes, so he said it would keep him amused for some time. [auto-translated]”
Vita Sexualis on I Am a Cat: “Then Natsume Kinnosuke began to write novels. Kanai read them with great interest and felt an itch to write himself, but when things like "I Am Also a Cat" and "I Am a Dog" appeared in answer to Natsume's "I Am a Cat," he grew thoroughly sick of the idea and ended up writing nothing. [auto-translated]”
Vita Sexualis on Germinal: “Such a suspicion had crossed his mind when he read Zola's novels as well. It was in Germinal and the like, where he describes the people of a workers' settlement at the extreme of hardship and a passage in which someone goes to peep at a man and woman at a rendezvous, that he had thought so. [auto-translated]”
Vita Sexualis on Introduction to Philosophy: “One day Kanai saw a student in the classroom holding a small book, Jerusalem's Introduction to Philosophy. After the lecture he picked it up and asked what kind of book it was. The student said it had come into the bookshop and he had bought it thinking it might serve as a reference, and Kanai borrowed it and read it that evening. [auto-translated]”
Vita Sexualis on Confessions: “Rousseau's Confessions is a book that holds back nothing, with remarkable frankness. When he forgot what he had been taught as a child, the pastor's daughter would catch him and spank him, and it felt so wonderful that he pretended not to know things so that she would spank him. [auto-translated]”
Vita Sexualis on Cynismus: “Later, while I was reading Theodor Vischer's Cynismus, I thought of Wanikuchi the whole time. The word cynic comes from the Greek kyon, a dog; a doglike person is one who, as a dog loves to thrust its nose into filth, cannot be satisfied until he has made everything dirty. [auto-translated]”
Vita Sexualis on The Hunchback of Notre-Dame: “When I read Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Notre Dame) and came across the little girl with the jewel-like name of Emeraude, I remembered that girl in Kanda dancing the kappore under the umbrella, and thought she must have been much the same sort of creature. [auto-translated]”
Vita Sexualis on Shunshoku Umegoyomi: “He felt as if he were Tanjirō of Shunshoku Umegoyomi, and thought how pleasant it would be to be adored by a girl like Ochō; this notion first stirred in him during this period, when he read lending-library romances. [auto-translated]”
Vita Sexualis on Jin Ping Mei: “One day I saw a Chinese-bound book peeking out from under the master's desk, and it was the Jin Ping Mei. I had read only Bakin's Kinpeibai, but I knew the Chinese edition of the Jin Ping Mei was very different, and I thought: this master is a man one can't let one's guard down around. [auto-translated]”