THE TOKUGAWA PERIOD The Tokugawa era (1603-1867), which popularized the drama, had memorable effects upon Japanese literature. Yedo, the shO gun's capital, displaced Kioto as the centre of literary activity. An unparalleled development of mental activity necessitated wholesale drafts upon the Chinese vocabulary. To this may be attributed the appearance of a group of men known as kangakusha (Chinese scholars). The most celebrated among them were: Fujiwara Seikwa (156o-1619), who introduced his countrymen to the philosophy of Chu-Hi; Hayashi Rasan (1583-1657), who wrote 170 treatises on scholastic and moral subjects; Kaibara Ekken (163o-1714), teacher of a fine system of ethics; Arai Hak useki (1657-17 2 5 ) , historian, philosopher, statesman and fin ancier; and Muro KiusO, the second great exponent of Chu-Hi's philosophy. Iyeyasu's grandson, the feudal chief of Mito (1662– I700), organized the compilation of Dai-Nihon-Shi, in 240 volumes. This became now the standard historical work ald was followed by the imperially named Reigi Ruiten (Rules of Cere monial), in more than 500 volumes. In the year 1827 was pub lished the Nihon Gwaishi (General History of Japan), by Rai Sanyo. These works are, for the most part, mere dull recitals of plain fact with no style or alleviation of any kind. At a later period popular ballads, dramatically detailing the struggles of great rival clans, replaced these histories in the popular fancy. In the last years of the 19th century the Japanese recognized this sad defect and instituted a section for historiographers in the Imperial university of Tokyo.
Although the incursions made into Chinese philosophy and the revival of Japanese traditions during the Tokugawa epoch contributed materially to the overthrow of feudalism and the restoration of the Throne's administrative power, the immediate tendency of the last two events was to divert the nation's atten tion wholly from the study of either Confucianism or the Record of Ancient Matters. A universal thirst set in for Occidental science and literature, so that students occupied themselves every where with readers and grammars modelled on European lines rather than with the Analects or the Kojiki. English at once be came the language of learning. Thus the three colleges which formed the nucleus of the Imperial university of Tokyo were presided over by a graduate of Michigan college (Prof. Toyama), a member of the English bar (Prof. Hozumi) and a graduate of Cambridge (Baron Kikuchi). If Japan was eminently fortunate in the men who directed her political career at that time, she was equally favoured in those who presided over her literary culture. Fukuzawa Yukichi, founder of the KeiO Gijuku, now one of Japan's four universities, did more than any of his contemporaries, by writing and speaking, to spread a knowledge of the West, its ways and its thoughts; and Nakamura Keiu laboured in the same cause by translating Smiles's Self-help and Mill's Representative Government. A universal geography (by Uchida Masao) ; a his tory of nations (by Mitsukuri Rinshei) ; a translation of Cham bers's Encyclopaedia by the department of education; Japanese renderings of Herbert Spencer and of Guizot and Buckle—all these made their appearance during the first 14 years of the Meiji era. The business of translating went on apace. Great numbers of European and American authors were rendered into Japanese— Calderon, Lytton, Disraeli, Byron, Shakespeare, Milton, Turgen iev, Carlyle, Daudet, Emerson, Hugo, Heine, De Quincey, Dickens, Korner, Goethe—their name is legion and their influence upon Japanese literature is conspicuous. This energetic pursuit of another alien literature had its inevitable reaction in a further nationalist movement. When English was made a compulsory subject in all Japanese schools this movement was made even stronger as a direct result of the schoolboys' revolt against forced tuition in a difficult study. The full effects of this, however, were not to be felt until the dawn of the next era The glory of Meiji was, alas, not to be sustained. Whether the mistake lay with the old giants of the Meiji era or in the insuf ficiency of their sons it is impossible at this close range to decide. In the later years of the Meiji period it became obvious that the spirit animating the intellectual and literary leaders was dying; some of the old magic still clung to the name of the dynasty, but nothing more. The new writers lacked the capability for sustained effort, their works were spasmodically produced, and were often completely without style. There was an unrestrained crudeness about the new literature which horrified those who still remem bered the early Meiji period.
The change was almost complete when the young men began banding themselves together into various associations, such as the "New Romanization Society" (Shin Romaji Kai), the "Foreign Language Research Society" (Gaikokugo Kenkyu Kai), the "Jap anese Script Society" (Nipponji Kai), etc. These unofficial organ izations achieved very little, except of positive harm. American isms, cant and slang terms, undistinguished from "standard Eng lish," were imported freely and incorporated into novels, belles lettres and even scientific treatises. The free-verse writers of England and America must be held responsible for a peculiarly unpleasing form of composition which, while entirely foreign to the genius of the Japanese language, was adopted by the writers of this period in place of the tanka and hokku as the only possible style of poetic composition. The actual result of these liberal importations from foreign fields was the flood of ineffective and of ten vulgar books offered to foreign students as Japanese con temporary literature. While book-production was never so ample,
it was never so uniformly devoid of merit.
The Meiji era translations of European classics and contem porary works, though marred by many faults of inexperience, are still to be preferred to later versions. Bacon, Shakespeare, Ma caulay, Milton, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Victor Hugo, de Maupas sant, Dante, Heine were all retranslated under this dynasty. The new translations are, however, far from being reliable. In many cases whole sections of the original are left untranslated, at the whim of the editor. Despite this, the character "zen" (com plete) is found on the back of the book and on the title-page. In other cases, scenes which are purely national in the original work are recast, details being altered to suit Japanese surroundings. Thomas Hardy's novels suffer particularly in this unnatural trans mutation: in one or two popular translations now in vogue Hardy becomes merely a mediocre Bakin leading some dull puppets over dreary Japanese marshes.
The outstanding literary feature of the Taisho era is the inun dation of Japan by Russian works. Tolstoi ceased to be fashion able; Andreyev, Balmont, Sologub, Pushkin, Zinaida Hippius, Lermontov, Gogol, Tchekhov and Turgeniev held the imagination of youthful Japan during these years. Although no further im pulse was needed, it was supplied by the signing of the Russo Japanese Treaty early in 1925, when numerous societies for the encouragement of research into Russian literary and philosophic fields sprang into existence. Russian plays were hastily and imper fectly translated into Japanese (The Cherry Orchard was a note worthy exception), and produced by Japanese actors at the Little theatre in Tsukiji, Tokyo. Gogol, in his more dreary moods, was freely translated into novels of social life, and the sentimentality so characteristic of the true Japanese novelist becomes tinctured with a despair imported from the Siberian steppes. Arishima Takeo, an idol of the young reader in modern Japan, demon strated this phase not only in his novels but in his life and death.
The Occidental treatment of women engaged the attention of writers of all classes, and political writers condemned the drastic changes proposed by the novelists. Foremost, perhaps, not only of modern woman-novelists but of all since the days of Murasaki no Shikibu, is Mrs. Yayoi Nogami, wife of Nogami Toyoichiro, the greatest living Japanese authority on the classical drama (No), and translator of Bernard Shaw. A later novel of hers, Kaishin Maru (The Seagod Ship), is justly esteemed above all contem porary works.
No account of modern Japanese literature would be complete without reference to certain writers who, in spite of their lack of real merit, have captured and held the popular imagination. Nat sume Soseki is chiefly remembered for his W agahai wa Neko de Aru (I am a Cat) and Botchan (The Boy). He died before the full force of change induced by indiscriminate importation had been felt, and his work was modelled rather on the later Meiji style. "The Two Kikuchi," as they were familiarly called (Kikuchi Kan and Kikuchi Yuba), devoted themselves to the writing of novels in which women's problems are discussed and advanced views of social life are set forth. Kume Masao, Satomi Ton and Akutagawa Ryunosuke also, in some measure, gratified the cur rent passion for original styles and exotic scenes. Kurata Hyakuzo is regarded as the leading spirit of modern Japanese drama ; one of his plays, The Priest and his Disciples, has been translated into English and published with the original text by Glenn Shaw (Tokyo, 1923). The sex-novel of Europe has its imitations in works by Tanizaki Junichiro and Morita SOhei. Tanizaki writes very colloquially on the subject of hysterical women, psychoan alytic studies in the West providing him with unlimited material. Morita &Mei was once considered a very brilliant writer, his Baien (Sooty Smoke) being an exceptional success. He afterwards turned his attention to translations of Ibsen's plays.
Matsuura Hajime is the only literary man of this period to remain true to the best traditions of his country's literary history. Unaffected by the many new movements for the development of art, letters and the drama, he is the foremost poet and essayist of modern Japan. In 1925 he resigned his professorship at the Im perial university in Tokyo, "as a protest against the insincerity and shallowness of modern academicians, artists and writers, who would profane the shrine of pure art by setting up base images of foreign clay." In his Bungaku no Byakko (The Pure White Light of Literature) Matsuura displays a sensitiveness and purity of ideal which had been lost to Japan since the close of the Nara period.
The constitutional ban on revolutionary and socialist doctrines resulted in the issue of a complete Marxian library and a series of handbooks purporting to be short cuts to Bolshevism. The Showa period, which began in December 1926, has so far not made any original literary gesture and there is no sign of a return to the early simplicity of literary models.