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 work deals realistically with a commonplace, rather lethargic young intellectual of the Meiji Period. Futabatei’s study of Russian literature, in particular of Turgenev, had convinced him of the need for realism both in subject and in style. He was the first important novelist to abandon the conventional literary language and to use ordinary colloquial forms in describing the inner struggles of the modern man. In this and many other ways The Drifting Cloud occupies a pioneer role in the development of modern Japanese fiction, although it will hardly strike most present-day readers as a literary masterpiece.

Another outstanding figure in Meiji literature was Mori Ōgai (1862–1922), the first of the twenty-five writers represented in the present anthology. Whereas previous writers knew the West mainly through their readings, Ōgai became acquainted with Europe at first hand as an army doctor in Germany from 1884 to 1888. During these years he became familiar with current European literature and his voluminous translations and essays greatly affected the development of modern Japanese drama and poetry, as well as the novel and the short story. In his literary criticism Ōgai was greatly influenced by the idealistic aestheticism which was current in Germany during the latter part of the nineteenth century and which was expressed by such philosophers as Karl von Hartmann. He returned from Europe at a time when German influence was steadily becoming stronger in Japan, as seen for example in the enactment of the Meiji Constitution (1889), based to an important extent on German principles of absolutism.

Ōgai criticized many of Tsubouchi’s theories concerning realistic literature and in their place advanced a form of romanticism that laid stress on the emotional realization of the self. His first piece of fiction, which appeared in 1890, was the romantic account of a tragic love affair in Berlin between a young Japanese gentleman engaged in research work and a beautiful German ballet-dancer named Alice. Evidently based on