Page:Modern Japanese Novels and the West.pdf/25

 the affection of scores of young ladies by his manly charms, he feebly allows the one girl he loves to be taken from him by another man. Futabatei’s interest in Russian literature has led critics to suggest that The Drifting Cloud was inspired by Goncharov’s famous novel Oblomov, the supreme portrait of the lethargic hero. Oblomov may well have offered Futabatei some germs of inspiration, but The Drifting Cloud is certainly no mere imitation or Japanese adaptation of Oblomov. The book is entirely faithful to the Japan it describes—more so, certainly, than novels composed in the traditional manner, which by 1887 had become an anachronism. European influence enabled Futabatei to be a thoroughly Japanese writer. It liberated him from a literary past which deserved to be rejected. And his book in many ways surpasses Oblomov. It is a masterpiece of its kind and almost unbelievably good as the first work of a new movement.

Many translations of European novels appeared in the 1880’s and 90’s. They were chosen more systematically than before and executed with comparative fidelity to the originals. In the wake of translations came more and more Japanese works written under their influence. Some of them so