Page:Modern Japanese Novels and the West.pdf/36

 Reading contemporary Japanese fiction as outsiders, we are likely to be startled now by the unexpected closeness to our own world, now by its remoteness. Yet, as anyone who has visited Japan knows, this is exactly the impression Japan itself produces today. It is not surprising therefore that the literature, which reflects contemporary Japan, should be equally heterogenous. Some writers today are still worried about what is truly Japanese. They may write works based on folk themes, believing them to be closer to the Japanese people than anything imported from the West. Or they may deliberately refrain from using any of the countless words borrowed from English and other European languages. But for most writers anything in Japan today, however obviously of Western origin, is a fit subject for a Japanese writer.

It is true that even the young intellectuals who burn with concern over politics and economics may read with a pleasure that Western novels do not quite afford the picaresque tales of the last century. Professors of English or French are also likely to confess that their real love is Japanese literature. Such preferences, however, are apt to be born of nostalgia or love of the Japanese language itself rather than the product of a theory of