Futabatei Shimei: Life and Major Works

Born in 1864 in Edo; his real name was Hasegawa Tatsunosuke. He studied Russian at the Tokyo School of Foreign Languages and became deeply absorbed in Russian literature, above all Turgenev. Writing "Ukigumo" ("Drifting Clouds") with the encouragement and patronage of Tsubouchi Shōyō, he opened the way for the modern novel with genbun'itchi, prose close to the spoken language. His translation from Russian, "Aibiki" ("The Rendezvous"), likewise established a realist style of description that greatly influenced later writers, but dissatisfied with his own literature, he left the literary world for a time to work as a government official and newspaper reporter. He returned to fiction late in life with "Sono Omokage" ("Her Image") and "Heibon" ("Mediocrity"), but died in 1909 at the age of 45 of pulmonary tuberculosis aboard ship in the Bay of Bengal, on his way home from serving as the Asahi Shimbun's correspondent in Russia.