SERIOUS NOVELS

Closely related to tragic novels, the term shinkoku shosetsu denotes a genre of fiction that emerged from narrative experiments with social realism written by authors in the early 1900s. These novels deal realistically with the state of society and tragic or difficult human situations. One prominent author of seri ous novels was Hirotsu Ryuro, who published two serious novels, Hemeden (Cross-Eyed Den, 1895) and Kurotokage (Black Lizard, 1895).