Mori Ōgai's classical novel, The Wild Geese or The Wild Goose (1911–13, 雁 Gan), was first published in serial form in Japan, and tells the story of unfulfilled love set against a background of social change and Westernization.

Mori sympathetically portrays the dilemmas and frustrations faced by women in this early period of Japan's modernization.

The novel was made into a movie of the same name by Shirō Toyoda in 1953, starring Hideko Takamine as Otama.

Otama, the only child of a widower merchant, wishing to provide for her aging father, is forced by poverty to become the moneylender's mistress.

When Otama learns the truth about Suezo, she feels betrayed, and hopes to find a hero to rescue her.