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named Mysterious Orchid who is dedicated to the cause of political liberty in her country. Both women are seemingly attracted by the lonely wanderer, but after an inconclusive romance with them, he moves on, more interested in gathering data for his study of popular uprisings than in their feminine charms.
The true beginning of the modern Japanese novel is usually traced to the critical study The Essence of the Novel, published by Tsubouchi Shôyô in 1885. Tsubouchi, while a student at Tokyo University in 1881, attended lectures delivered by an American professor on the plays of Shakespeare. On one occasion the professor asked his class to discuss the character of Gertrude in Hamlet. Tsubouchi’s answer, couched in terms of the traditional Japanese morality, earned for him an extremely bad mark. This set him to pondering the differences between Eastern and Western thought, and he began to investigate by reading whatever English books were available. In 1883, when he was only twenty-four, he completed The Essence of the Novel, though it was not to be published until two years later, owing to general apathy in the literary world. Not more than 200 copies of the book were sold, but its influence was all out of proportion to the
