Professor Kanai, a philosophy lecturer who has never written a book, decides to set down the history of his own sexual life, so that he might one day show it to his grown-up son. He recalls his boyhood from the age of six, from lending-library romances and a stolen peek at a bawdy picture book to dormitory crushes and a half-awakened feeling for the maid Ochō, down to his first visit to a teahouse as a young doctor.
Books mentioned in Vita Sexualis (16)
I Am a Cat by Natsume Sōseki: “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]”
Germinal by Émile Zola: “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]”
Introduction to Philosophy by Wilhelm Jerusalem: “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]”
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau: “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]”
Cynismus by Friedrich Theodor Vischer: “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]”
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo: “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]”
Shunshoku Umegoyomi by Tamenaga Shunsui: “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]”
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]”
Han Feizi by Han Fei: “I knew Wanikuchi's character well. He bowed to no authority, and because he held nothing sacred, those around him sometimes suffered for it. I thought him cold-hearted, and the fact that he had studied the Chinese classics and always kept the Han Feizi on his desk probably contributed to that. [auto-translated]”
Seisetsurō Shishō by Kikuchi Sankei: “Beside Bitō Eiichi I read the Seisetsurō Shishō. One day, as we were reading it together, there was a poem about Tekona of Mama, and I suddenly remembered something and asked him whether his mother was not his real one. [auto-translated]”
Honchō Gushō Shinshi by Kikuchi Sankei: “I borrowed from Eiichi and read the Seisetsurō Shishō, and then I read the Honchō Gushō Shinshi. Then, because new pieces by Sankei were coming out, I went to Asakusa and bought the Kagetsu Shinshi and read that too; the two of us made poems and wrote little pieces in Chinese for fun. [auto-translated]”
Jiandeng Yuhua by Li Zhen: “Since I had made friends who were scholars of Chinese learning, I read the Jiandeng Yuhua, I read the Yanshan Waishi, I read the Qingshi. The naive romances of young men and women written in such books made me terribly envious and jealous. [auto-translated]”
Yanshan Waishi by Chen Qiu: “After I first read the Umegoyomi on a borrowed copy, I made friends who were scholars of Chinese learning, and I read the Jiandeng Yuhua, I read the Yanshan Waishi, I read the Qingshi, and the naive romances in these books left me envious and jealous. [auto-translated]”
Qingshi by Feng Menglong: “I read the Jiandeng Yuhua, I read the Yanshan Waishi, I read the Qingshi; the naive romances of young men and women in such books were painfully enviable to me, since I had not been born handsome and so this beautiful thing was an unreachable ideal. [auto-translated]”
The Carnal Prayer Mat by Li Yu: “There is an outrageous obscene book by a Chinese author, The Carnal Prayer Mat (Rouputuan), and, as is typical of the Chinese, it tacks a moral of divine retribution onto its plot. It is truly a foolish book, in which the hero Weiyangsheng, worried that a certain part of his body is too small, goes about peeking at people urinating. [auto-translated]”
Kinpeibai by Takizawa Bakin: “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]”