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 in the life of the author-hero and is one of the first in the long series of Japanese novels that unabashedly describe the experiences and emotions of the character known as watakushi (‘I’).

Many reasons have been suggested for this confessional aspect of Japanese Naturalism. According to some critics, the late collapse of feudalism and the fact that important changes have always come from above rather than as a result of popular effort resulted in a peculiarly wide gulf between individual and social life and made the Japanese far less interested in political and social questions than people in most modern Western countries. Strong authoritarian traditions gave rise to a widespread feeling of indifference or resignation to outside problems and official censorship discouraged Meiji writers from voicing any criticism of current conditions. Writers who wished to present life strictly on the basis of facts concentrated on their direct personal experiences, tending to neglect the wider subjects that had been treated by Zola and the other Naturalists of the West. Readers, for their part, were prone to be more interested in books that described the detailed experiences of a single individual, preferably the writer himself, rather than novels giving a broad picture of society by means of a more objective handling of a variety of characters.

The main legacy of Naturalism in Japan has been to convince many writers that the only worthwhile and ‘sincere’ form of literature is that which takes its material directly from the facts of the author’s physical and spiritual life. This trend affected several writers who were in other respects strongly opposed to the Naturalists. Among them was Shiga Naoya, whose success in the genre encouraged many less talented authors to probe into their personal experiences for literary material.

The shi-shōsetsu tradition, though it has sometimes given rise to works of unusual sharpness and honesty, has had a number of baneful effects. In their efforts at faithful