which by a curious contradiction, is written in the most classical Chinese style. Sometimes the future is peered into, after the example of Lytton and the author of "The Battle of Dorking." In 1895, while Japan was busy beating China, and had convinced herself that she could beat the world, one of the Tōkyō papers achieved a success by the publication of a serial noved entitled Asahi-Zakura, by a feuilletonist called Murai Gensai. The heroines of this book were two Red Cross nurses, and the story was that of the coming defeat of England by Japan, who, after annexing Hongkong, India, Malta, and Gibraltar, sends her fleet up the Thames to raze the fortresses there and to exact from the cowering Britishers an enormous indemnity.
The favourite novelists of the present day are Rohan, a subjective, introspective writer, and Tokutomi Roka, whose Omoi-de no Ki and Hototogisu may be particularly recommended to the foreign student for their good colloquial style. Aeba Koson's short stories, collected under the title of Muratake, are also much read. So are the works of the realist Koyo Sanjin, who died in 1903. The European influence in most such modern prose-writers affects not only the choice and treatment of the subject-matter, but the very style and grammar. Even when perusing an original production, one might often take it for a translation, so saturated is it apt to be with "Europeanisms." An effort was made a few years ago to Europeanise even poetry, by the introduction of rhyme and by other innovations; but the genius of the language proving essentially unsuitable, the attempt failed. After all, if poetry is to be started on a new flight, the first prerequisite would be an original poet, and that is precisely what was and still is lacking. Sasaki Nobutsuna may be mentioned as the most attractive of contemporary writers of verse. Though he adheres to the old thirty-one syllable form,—is, in fact, thoroughly Japanese and a conservator of the past,—still he has contrived to infuse some measure of new vigour into the volume of his selected best pieces entitled Omoi-gusa, published in 1903.
Among more serious and influential modern productions may
