A Berlin-based writer from Osaka Prefecture has chronicled her search for the truth behind a famous short story about a love affair between an elite Meiji Era bureaucrat and a German dancing girl.
Ichika Rokuso, 50, has written two books examining the long-standing mystery surrounding the German girlfriend of author Mori Ogai (1862-1922), believed to be a model for the protagonist in "Maihime" ("The Dancing Girl").
Rokuso, who has lived in Berlin for 25 years, compiled into her two books — the first published in 2011 and the second this year — her findings in Germany about Ogai's real-life girlfriend, Elise Marie Caroline Wiegert.