Page:Modern Japanese Stories.pdf/28

 period in Japanese writing. The steady improvement of economic conditions, political stabilization under a succession of conservative governments and the official resumption of national independence in 1952 led to a more normal and tranquil atmosphere; this inevitably had its effect on literature, even though many of the iconoclastic apurē trends continued.

A remarkably large number of the important Meiji period writers were still alive. Many of them had been obliged to remain silent during the years of militarist repression, but after the war they once more became active. Their earlier works were republished and many of them continued to write novels and stories. It is a tribute to the longevity and energy of Japanese authors that so many of those who first made their names some forty years ago should still be alive and engaged on new work.

The present literary scene is one of immense activity. Publishers and literary magazines abound, and the number of novels and stories published every year is overwhelming. With books extremely cheap (an average novel costs the equivalent of 6s. and of 1s. 6d. in a paper-backed edition) and the reading public large and alert, sales are vastly in excess of those before the war; the material rewards for literary success are considerable. Some of the most substantial incomes in Japan are at present earned by popular writers.

This situation is not without its dangers—dangers almost as great as those that beset the economically hard pressed writers before the war. There is a considerable risk that ‘pure literature’ (as it is rather primly termed in Japan) will still further lose audiences to commercial literature and to the so-called ‘middle novels’, which occupy a place somewhere between the artistic and the popular. In order to earn money many of the best writers produce serial novels for newspapers and magazines of large circulation. Sometimes an author will be working