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 greater than that provided by the Meiji Restoration, there was no rupture with native literary tradition such as occurred in the nineteenth century. Whereas the new Meiji writers tended to look entirely to the West for their models, the writers of the present day receive their influence both from the West and from their own writers of the past sixty years.

Even in the early days of importation, literary influence in Japan rarely produced slavish imitation of certain specific European or American models. It was usually a much more indirect and complex process. As the young post-war writer, Mr Mishima Yukio, has pointed out, Japanese novelists have usually assimilated only those elements of foreign literature that are in some way close to the recipient. This is more than ever true today when the Japanese writer has such an immense selection of world literature at his disposal.

Although the most conspicuous influences have certainly come from Europe, it would be a mistake to discount the effect of Chinese and Japanese classical literature on certain modern writers. This classical influence is reflected in the imagery, the descriptions, the general mood and sometimes the structural techniques of many outstanding post-Meiji writers and their successors. One of the most interesting aspects of writers like Nagai Kafū, Tanizaki Junichirō and Kawabata Yasunari is precisely the way in which they succeeded in moulding classical traditions with modern Western thought and technique.

However, the fact remains that the modern Japanese novel and story are essentially Western forms; in so far as literary influence has played a part, most Japanese prose writers are indebted to modern Western literature far more than to their own country’s classical tradition. It is writers like Hugo, Poe, Whitman, Baudelaire, Dostoievsky, Tolstoy, Hardy, Zola,