Page:Japanese Literature (Keene).pdf/97

Rh writers of popular fiction, but of such eminently respectable people as the poet Bashō. A frequent motif in the art of the time is that of waves, the most dramatically changing of forms. The fleeting pleasures of life were more prized than the eternal values which the medieval recluses had sought. In their desire to recapture the pleasures of the day, the writers and artists sometimes went far beyond the bounds of decency, and from time to time the government adopted measures against pornographic works. But in a society where the licensed quarters were the centre of artistic life, and their denizens the subjects of most novels, plays and prints, it was perhaps too much to demand any reticence in calling a spade a spade.

The humour in the novels of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is apt to be topical, and much has therefore perished, leaving us with little more than an impression of the vitality and zest for living of the authors. So much cannot be said of the writings of Bakin (1767–1848), the last major novelist before the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Bakin, in reaction to the immorality of the novels of his immediate predecessors, declared that the purpose of his books was to “encourage virtue and reprimand vice”. This he did in an immense bulk of writing, much of which is quite unreadable today. Bakin not only wrote original novels, but also adapted some of the more famous Chinese works in this form. Up to his time, the influence of the Chinese novel had been very slight in Japan, which was a most fortunate thing. Although Chinese influence was the essential factor in the development of many aspects of Japanese culture, in literature it often proved harmful, unless thoroughly digested. Anything written in Japan in direct imitation of Chinese models, however highly valued it may have been in its day, is now completely dead. Those contemporaries of Lady Murasaki who prided themselves on