Page:Modern Japanese Stories.pdf/30

 a literature of social protest have had very little effect on post-war fiction. Their voices are heard more in the political than in the literary field; they frequently emerge as vocal opponents of conservative policy or as apologists for left-wing causes.

The shi-shōsetsu tradition of semi-autobiographical ‘fiction’ has survived into the post-war period, but it is no longer as widely followed as some decades ago. Most contemporary writers seem to be aware of the need for a wider approach than is usually manifested in the ‘I-novel’ and the ‘I-story’. Nevertheless, the confessional, diary type of writing, in which everything is seen through the eyes of one lone, sensitive individual, continues to be far more popular in Japan than in the West.

After 1945 the torrent of translations from foreign languages, which naturally subsided during the war, reached new heights. Novels, plays, short stories and poems from almost every country in the world were translated and published for a public whose appetite had been whetted by the years of official xenophobia and isolation. The choice of books for translation was often indiscriminate, sometimes incomprehensible. Nevertheless in the influx a large mass of worthwhile literature from the outside world has been made available.

To what extent, then, is current Japanese literature influenced by that of the West? In the first place, it should be emphasized that on the whole the influence is not nearly as direct as is often assumed by Western readers. Japan has now had some seventy years in which to absorb the literary traditions of the West. European and American literature have come to be taken for granted, and works from the outside no longer carry the aura of the exotic and the startling that they had in the early days of importation. Even more important, Japanese writers now have their own great literary figures—Natsumé Sōseki, Mori Ōgai, among others. They can now look back with a sense of belonging to an indigenous, if recent, tradition. Although in many ways the Pacific War and its aftermath constituted a break with the past as great or even