Out of the Alleyway tells a story about the man Nakagami Kenji and, from that biographical perspective, reads him as an author. In other words, its primary interpretive stance views his fiction and critical writings in relation to his life—most importantly, the effect of his outcaste status as hisabetsu burakumin on his writings. The text is organized chronologically, beginning with Nakagami's childhood in Shingu City and his first literary endeavors in the genre of poetry, through his relocation to Tokyo and development into a mature and respected writer of shishôsetsu (biographical fiction), monogatari (fictional writings inspired and often adaptive and/or deconstructive of the literary canon), and literary/cultural criticism, to his untimely death in 1992. Out of the Alleyway will surely be read widely among students and teachers of Japanese literature, and most likely sections of it will be assigned in undergraduate classrooms.
Author Eve Zimmerman and I met Nakagami Kenji...