Page:Modern Japanese Novels and the West.pdf/12

 insights that underlie all novels of lasting merit.

The rise to world recognition of the modern Japanese novel, mainly through American translations, would undoubtedly have much surprised the men who first created it, almost literally from nothing. Although the novel in Japan has a longer history than in any other country—the first important one, The Tale of Genji, dates back to the year 1010—it had sunk to its lowest point by the middle of the nineteenth century and had ceased to be of literary significance. Prior to the arrival of Commodore Perry in 1853 and the restoration of imperial power under the Emperor Meiji in 1868, Japan had been sealed off from the rest of the world by her own choice for over two hundred years. At first this period of peaceful isolation fostered the unique qualities of Japanese literature, but with no outside stimuli at all for so many years, Japanese writers exhausted their talents. Debased imitations of older novels, some moralistic and some pornographic, made up the bulk of literary production. In the effort to intrigue readers when they could not convince them, novelists invented plots with incessant and absurd surprises. Constant references to current scandals and personalities made their books ephemeral; it is sometimes quite