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life and even of the whisperings of the devil. If they do, I think the outlook of nature will become visible, even though vaguely, among Meiji literary circles.[1]
The expression, "too romantic," which Katai used in this preface, boils down to "excessive embellishments" or "employing too much artifice," and his protest was directed against the leading novelists of his time, Kōyō and others of the Kenyūsha, without stating their names.
Three years later in an essay "Rokotsu naru Byōsha," or "A straightforward description," Katai reaffirmed his previous statement in the preface to No no Hana and advocated rejection of "mekki bungaku," or "belle-lettres," and the adoption of non-embellishment for the purpose of writing freely about one's feelings.[2] This essay was Katai's second challenge to some leading novelists of the Kenyūsha who withheld their true feelings for the sake of imitation. Katai urged these writers to follow the European exemplars "Ibsen, Tolstoy, Zola, Dostoevsky, D'Annunzio, Hauptmann, Sudermann, Halbe, and Holz," whose descriptions were frank, true, and natural.[3]
This "straightforward description" illustrates Katai's determination to depart from the traditional prose forms of his predecessors
- ↑ Tayama Katai, "No no Hana Jo," in Shizenshugi to Han-Shizenshugi, ed. by Nakamura Mitsuo and Yoshida Seiichi, Vol. II of Gendai Bungakuron Taikei (8 vols.; Tokyo: Kawade Shobō, 1953), pp. 10–11.
- ↑ It is significant to note that Katai's essay "Rokotsu naru Byōsha" was written in 1904, one year after the death of Kōyō to whom Katai owed allegiance.
- ↑ Tayama Katai, "Rokotsu naru Byōsha," in Shizenshugi to Han-Shizenshugi, Vol. II of Gendai Bungakuron Taikei, op. cit., pp. 12–15.
