Page:Modern Japanese Stories.pdf/39

 modern Japanese story—with the exception, that is, of the most common form of all, namely, cheap magazine stories written by popular writers (taishū-sakka) whose sole aim is to appeal to as large a public as possible.

There have been no deliberate efforts to represent all the different aspects of modern Japanese life. The twenty-five stories do, however, give a remarkably wide picture of the various strata of society during the first half of the present century, and for many readers unfamiliar with Japan this may provide as much interest as their actual literary content. Not a single story has been chosen for its specifically Japanese or Oriental quality. While characteristic Japanese scenes, customs and psychology emerge throughout the stories, the reader will find nothing in the way of quaintness or Japonaiserie. Many of the stories do provide an insight into unfamiliar ways of life and thought. In social life as well as in literature it is often the very degree of Westernization in post-Meiji Japan that makes the specifically Japanese qualities stand out. To read the works of a wide range of modern Japanese writers is to rid oneself of many preconceptions and commonly accepted generalizations concerning Japan and her people. At the same time it brings home to us that, impressive as it has been, the break with the past marked by the years 1868 and 1945 was in some ways not nearly as complete as might be supposed.

The question of tradition and foreign influence may be briefly outlined as follows. The Meiji Restoration marked an almost complete break in some fields (e.g. official recognition of a social system in which the warrior class was supreme, official support for Confucianism), a partial break in others (e.g. the bureaucratic structure, eating habits); but in some fields (e.g. Nō theatre, family system in rural areas) there was considerable continuity.

In the case of literature there was hardly any break in the development of Nō or in Haiku poetry, for example, but an almost complete break in the novel and the story. It follows that when we read a collection of modern Japanese stories