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 even in such subjects as geography and mathematics, in the Russian language. Although the purpose of the school was to train young Japanese to deal with the Russians in Saghalien and other areas of conflicting Russo-Japanese interests, the students were given an excellent grounding in Russian literature. If anything suffered it was their knowledge of the Japanese classics. Unkind critics when discussing The Drifting Cloud, the first novel written entirely in the colloquial, have suggested that Futabatei chose this style because he was unable to cope with the florid literary language popular with novelists of the day. Be that as it may, the shift from the archaic phraseology of earlier books to the modern speech was a vital step in the development of realistic fiction. Even though many Japanese novelists continued to employ the old language for another decade or so, it was doomed. Writers today are all the literary heirs of Futabatei.

The Drifting Cloud is a brilliant portrayal of the newly-arisen society of its time. It is particularly successful in its treatment of the new men of the bureaucracy and the intelligentsia. The hero, a young man named Bunzô, is utterly unlike the characters found in Japanese novels of a few years earlier. He is timid and ineffectual. Far from