The Wild Geese

Über

Mori Ogai's classical novel, The Wild Geese or The Wild Goose was first published in serial form in Japan, and tells the story of unfulfilled love set against a background of social change and Westernization. The story is set in 1880 Tokyo. The novel contains commentary on the changing situation between the Edo and Meiji periods. The characters of the novel are diverse, including not only students preparing for a privileged intellectual life and commoners who provide services to them, but also a pair of highly developed female characters. Mori sympathetically portrays the dilemmas and frustrations faced by women in this early period of Japan's modernization.
The novel was filmed by Shirō Toyoda in 1953 as The Mistress, starring Hideko Takamine as Otama.