Chapter 1
Introduction
Historians of modern literature have generally used the year 1885 to mark the inception of western style fiction in Japan. For it was in that year that one of the pioneers of Meiji literature, Tsubouchi Shōyō, published Shōsetsu Shinzui, or The Essence of the Novel, which contained the first literary theory that set forth the basic ideals of modern literature.[1]
Shōyō, deploring the poor quality of Japanese literature of his time, sought to improve this situation by adopting realistic approaches to the western point of view by abandoning gesaku, or the demi-novel, as an instrument of didactic intent.
The contribution of Shōsetsu Shinzui to the development of modern Japanese literature was profound. Shōyō enhanced the status of the novel as one aspect of the fine arts, and by rejecting any didactic purposes utilized by the Tokugawa regime, paved the way for his fellow writers. His introduction of the literary techniques of Scott, Lytton, Smollet, Fielding, and others is well taken for illustrating his theory of "mosha," or "copying" of human behavior. Shōyō put into practice his theory of realism by writing his own novel Tōsei Shosei Katagi, or The Character of Modern Students, but "the material was still of the old gesaku genre, and his literary expression on many
- ↑ All Japanese names are given according to national custom in the order of surname first. The second time and thereafter that an author's name is mentioned I have used only the pen name, e.g., Shōyō. A list of Japanese persons mentioned in this text appears in Appendix B.
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