5
Bunzō who, like a good descendant of the warrior class, refuses to praise anyone for the sake of promotion. His attitude costs him his position on which the livelihood of his old mother and his own future depend. Bunzō, in despair, believes it might be better for him to seek new living quarters; however, he can not tear himself away as he still has faint hopes of his uncle's faith in him as well as continued personal feelings for O-Sei.
The story of Ukigumo, after the setting and atmosphere are introduced, can hardly be said to have a plot. The efforts of Futabatei, as a writer who had studied Russian literature, seem to be placed on his observations and externalizations of the various psychological aspects of his characters as they react to constantly changing daily situations. The feelings of these people are well expressed by his use of colloquial language, as well as by his close observations of their behavior; consequently, the images of his characters take their own shapes organically as time progresses. These characters, in turn, realistically reflect life in the early Meiji era, progressively changing from a feudalistic to a capitalistic society, and its effects on their ideas of integrity, regarded as one of the virtues of the warrior in a feudalistic society. It would appear that Futabatei conveyed in his Ukigumo conditions as they existed by skillfully capturing man's fundamental problem, which was manifested in his characters: the struggle to maintain one's integrity despite the trend towards materialism of that time.
The significance of Ukigumo was recognized by intellectuals, but the story was left unfinished. Futabatei's aspiration to become a novelist faltered when he saw a dim future after four years of serious
