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which attempt to give a realistic picture of contemporary life we find two things. First, the actual form of the stories owes far more to modern Western influence than to pre-Meiji Japanese literature (here we have a case of the ‘almost complete break’). Secondly, much of what is reflected in the stories about modern Japanese life (e.g. the social position of women, the geisha system and its ramifications, the attitude to authority, the Buddhist sense of fatalism, the absence of any sense of sin regarding suicide) derives from pre-Meiji cultural traditions. For those who value the persistence of cultural diversity in the modern world this continuity is bound to be a cause for satisfaction.