Page:Modern Japanese Novels and the West.pdf/16

 aroused tremendous excitement in Japan. The seventeenth-century Télémaque offered not only exotic literary pleasures but the challenge of new political ideas to the Japanese of 1882. These translations served especially to arouse the interest of the intelligentsia in literature once more after a long period of contempt. They helped also to make new Japanese novels more serious in tone and content, thereby introducing a new concept of the function of fiction. Finally, they were instrumental in bringing about the literary revolution which was to take place at the end of the same decade. The Japanese could never be the same again. Even if the Japanese novelists of the 1880’s had elected to restrict themselves to the time-tested themes of their predecessors, they would inevitably have treated these themes differently. The modern novel had ceased to be thought of as a mere diversion, as ribald as the censorship would allow, and redeemed only by occasional bows in the direction of the traditional morality. It was believed to be capable of fulfilling a serious purpose.

The first novel written by a Japanese under the influence of the translated literature appeared in 1880. Not surprisingly, it was little more than a tentative stab. Three years later was published