FUTABATEI SHIMEI

Futabatei Shimei, born Hasegawa Tatsunosuke, was a realist author, Russian-Japanese translator, and literary critic. Futabatei studied Russian at the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages, but quit in protest of administrative restructuring. He then published the literary critique Shosetsu soron (General Theory of the Novel) in 1886, with the help and encouragement of Tsubouchi Shoyo. His later work Ukigumo (1887; tr. The Drifting Clouds, 1967), written in a colloquial narrative style borrowed from that used by storytellers in the yose theaters, is often called Japan’s first modern novel. Futabatei went on to write other novels and died of tuberculosis while returning from an assignment to Russia for the Asahi newspaper.

See also GENBUN ITCHI; PSYCHOLOGICAL LITERATURE; RAKUGO; SAN’YUTEI ENCHO; SHORTHAND.