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Contemporary literature in Japan, despite its remote ancestry, may be regarded as a new literature, scarcely beyond its formative stage. The Meiji Restoration marked a departure in Japanese writing, as it did in politics, education and so many other fields. For a general understanding of the modern Japanese novel or short story it is hardly necessary to go back more than a century. The Japanese language has undergone a continuous development since earliest times, and to this extent modern fiction derives stylistically from classical and medieval writing. Even here, however, the Restoration had an important effect by bringing the literary language closer to that of ordinary speech. The major influences can be found among works of foreign literature introduced into Japan after about 1860 and among certain important Japanese writers of the Meiji Period.

This introduction cannot attempt to present a systematic history of modern Japanese literature, but it may be worthwhile indicating a few general trends that can help the reader to view the twenty-five stories in context. Notes on the twenty-five authors and their place in modern Japanese writing appear at the end of the volume.

The historical approach to literature has many dangers. Too much concentration on ‘social backgrounds’, ‘literary influences’ and ‘schools of writing’ may lead us to read the stories not as independent works but as representatives of some particular period, and to regard their writers, not as unique individuals having their own views of life and their characteristic methods of expression, but simply as members of certain