Tayama Katai: Life and Major Works

Born in 1872 in Tatebayashi, Ōra District, Kōzuke Province (now Tatebayashi, Gunma Prefecture); his real name was Rokuya. He lost his father in the Satsuma Rebellion while still a boy and struggled through years of hardship before being recognized by Ozaki Kōyō and entering the literary world. He began with Romantic lyricism but, influenced by Western Naturalists such as Maupassant, turned toward realism. In 1907 he published "Futon" ("The Quilt") in the magazine "Shinshōsetsu," a work in which a married, middle-aged writer bares his own infatuation and desire for a young female disciple, shocking the literary world and creating the fountainhead of the confessional "I-novel," which candidly depicted the author's own real life. With the "flat description" that followed in works such as "Inaka Kyōshi" ("The Country Teacher") and "Sei" ("Life"), rendering its subject exactly as it was, he became, alongside Shimazaki Tōson, a leading figure of Naturalist literature. He also excelled at travel writing and essays, and in his later years left the memoir "Tōkyō no Sanjūnen" ("Thirty Years in Tokyo"). He died in 1930 at the age of 59.