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After returning home Michiyo sent two short stories--Ippon Enoki, or A Lone Hackberry, in June 1907 and in July Itoko, or Cousins--to a competition in the literary magazine Bunshō Sekai which Katai was editing. Both stories were selected by the magazine with Katai's compliments in his acceptance letters to Michiyo.
About this time Katai appeared ready to commence writing Futon; however, he wavered in his decision whether or not to write this novel.[1] One of his desires was to retain the respect of Michiyo by not revealing his love for her in his story, and another choice was to fulfill his literary ambition by writing Futon. He took the middle road of these two options when he wrote Shōjo Byō in May 1907. In this story Katai exposes candidly his hero's pining for a young and beautiful woman. The hero of Shōjo Byō is modeled after himself, although the story is written in the third person. It is interesting to note that in this story we can observe his naturalistic attitude of "straightforward description" of his real experiences, except that in this case the hero dies at the end of the story.
The publication of Shōjo Byō was not well received by his contemporaries and did not produce the expected encouragement for Katai. To make the situation more untenable for him, two of his friends, Tōson and Doppo, were already recognized as the writers of Hakai, or The Breaking of the Commandment, and Doppo Shū, or Doppo's Anthology. Unfortunately Katai had not, up to this time, written anything of literary value similar to that of these two close friends; therefore, Katai felt he was "left all alone."[2]
