Page:Japanese Literature (Keene).pdf/29

Rh writers of today have not entirely abandoned the traditional themes of their country’s literature.

The survival of the old forms would scarcely have been predicted at certain times in the past eighty years when it seemed as though European literature and ideas would overwhelm the native culture. This was especially true during the twenty years immediately following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, a time when Japanese literature reached its lowest point. The university in Tokyo was for a time without a department of Japanese and Chinese literature, while in some schools English but not Japanese literature and history were taught and even the readers used for moral instruction were translations of foreign textbooks. The Minister of Education, who was later assassinated by an opponent of his views, went so far as to favour the use of English instead of Japanese, and one writer even advocated that Japanese men all take European wives so as to improve the size and strength of the race. Such suggestions were not really feasible, but there was a much more serious possibility that the native literature would be entirely eclipsed. Translations of European works soon became the most popular books in Japan. In an attempt to discover the reasons for the success of Western peoples, as shown by their military and commercial achievements, Japanese turned first to books of instruction, such as Self-Help by Samuel Smiles, translated in 1870, only two years after the Meiji Restoration, and destined to play an important role in advising Japanese how best to get along in the European manner.

The Western books of a more literary character which were translated in the early days of the new Japan included novels by Bulwer Lytton and Disraeli, and the prevailingly political