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attempts. He did not give the necessary finishing touches to Ukigumo in spite of the popularity it had achieved. He finally accepted a position in the civil service in August, 1889. It was about this time that Shōyō also gave up his aspirations to become a novelist and turned his efforts to education and the translation of the works of Shakespeare. The meetings between Shōyō and Futabatei gradually became less frequent as each man followed his own interests.
The leading role in the westernization of Japanese literature was taken up by the writers of the Kenyūsha, who followed in the footsteps of Shōyō, but they, like Futabatei, failed in their endeavors. Their failure was partly due to their following too closely Shōyō's theory of realism.
As previously noted, Shōyō's ideals concerning modern literature were sound, but unfortunately, his literary theory contained many inarticulate ambiguities. This evaluation is further confirmed by Dr. Kawazoe Kunimoto.
. . . the ambiguity of the content of Shōsetsu Shinzui can be surmised from the fact that the persons who were inspired by this book included Futabatei Shimei and Ozaki Kōyō [a founder of the Kenyūsha] who were diametrically opposite in their literary attitudes. Had Shōyō been more thorough in implementing his theory of realism, he could have written in a manner of orthodox realism similar to that of Futabatei's Ukigumo. But some pre-modern commonplace elements to be seen in Shōsetsu Shinzui, which he had not been able completely to eradicate, were accountable for Shōyō's [later] unsuccessful semi-drama-like Shosei Katagi, and its simplistic comprehension of realism accounts for the production of neo-Genroku literature of superficial description by the Kenyūsha.[1]
- ↑ Kawazoe Kunimoto, Nihon Shizenshugi no Bungaku ("Japanese Naturalism in Literature") (Tokyo: Seishin Shobō, 1957), p. 4.
