# Tayama Katai and His Novel Entitled Futon/Chapter 5

Chapter V
The Significance of Futon
In Chapter II we concluded that Katai's prime motive for writing Futon was to fulfill his aspirations to create something of literary value superior to those of his friends Tōson and Doppo. Did Katai achieve his goal by writing Futon? Our comparative study of Futon and Einsame Menschen establishes that Katai advantageously adopted the prevailing novel elements--theme, characterization, and techniques--from Einsame Menschen. As a result Katai was able to write Futon reflecting the new sensibility of a modern man as found in European literature of the late nineteenth century, which aim, it should be remembered, was sought after as a means of westernizing Japanese novels by Tōson, Doppo, and Katai when they were striving to write better novels than those of the Kenyūsha writers. On the basis of these findings may we say that Katai achieved his goal in writing Futon.
With the publication of Futon, Katai was recognized as a first-class writer among the literati. What appears to have made Futon prominent and to have excited his contemporaries was Katai's sincerity and his "straightforward description" that was demonstrated in practice. Since a few examples on this point have already been cited in the observation of Katai's character development on pages 45 to 48, they will not be repeated; however, the ensuing passages are quoted to further demonstrate the outstanding characteristics of Futon. In these passages Katai describes Tokio's mental state after he lost Yoshiko.
   The mixed emotions of sexual desire, sadness, and despair suddenly attacked him. Tokio spread out the mattress and put the counterpane on top; he buried his face in the cold and soiled velvet neckband and cried.
In the above passages Katai describes both the inner and outer observations of his character. Katai's minute description of Tokio reminds a reader of the similarity to Hauptmann's portrayal of Johannes' state of mind when he hears the noise of an approaching train on which his departing friend Anna is on board:
   [. . . John opens the verandah door and stands listening there. The sound grows louder, and then gradually dies away. The station bell is heard. It rings a second time--a third time. Shrill whistle of the departing train. John turns to go into his room, but breaks down on the way; sinks on to a chair, his body shaken by a convulsion of weeping and sobbing. Faint moonlight on the verandah.]
The significance of Futon appears to be manifested in these passages transcribing the feelings of a man in the full reality of his existence. For the purpose of further elucidating this point let us examine how Kōyō, who was the leading novelist of the Kenyūsha, describes a similar situation to that of Tokio. The following excerpt is selected from Kōyō's masterpiece Konjiki Yasha, or the Gold Demon, with the hope ​of illustrating the significance of Futon by comparing the narrative techniques of Katai to those of Kōyō. In the ensuing passages Kōyō describes his principal character's (Kwanichi) mental state after he has lost the woman he loves (Miya) to a man of wealth.
   Being left alone in the wide, wide world, with no ties of kindred, and without meeting affection, Kwanichi was like a lonely stone in a wilderness not even haunted by beast or bird. The happiness he experienced, whilst living at the Shigisawa's, from the tender love of Miya, had been the cause of his seeking no other pleasures. His love for Miya was not like the usual love of a youth for a maiden; Miya was to him what the manifold ties of a family are to others, she represented the love of parents, sisters and brothers; she was indeed all in all to the poor Kwanichi; not merely love's young dream, but the substance of what the love of a united family would be. He had regarded her as his wife, and the lonely stone in the wilderness had gradually become warm under her genial influence. We can imagine then, under these conditions, what his feelings were, when he was robbed of his only treasure, when the girl to whom he had poured forth his whole heart, whom he had trusted as himself, to whom he had been faithful even in every thought, was untrue to him, deserting him and marrying another, leaving him stripped of everything and hopeless for the future.
   He had now, not only the old loneliness of having not a tie in the world, but his heart was full of resentment and disappointment. The lonely stone was now covered with frost, the biting wind flew over it, the bitterness of his life had entered into the very marrow of his bones. Since Miya had been taken from him there was nothing left for him to live for.
As can be seen from the above passages the narrative technique of Kōyō is that of a storyteller. He is totally detached from his story and describes the feelings of his principal character with elegant diction written in the pseudo-classical style of the late Edo period. In marked contrast to Kōyō's literary diction, Katai uses a colloquial style throughout his story. Katai, like Kōyō, primarily depicts his characters in the third person, but the difference between Katai's and ​Kōyō's techniques is that the former views his characters through the eyes of his principal character Tokio, while the latter observes his characters, all the time, in a manner similar to a storyteller, totally detached from them. The diction of Kōyō is polished but his character Kwanichi lacks animation, in marked contrast to the passages quoted from Futon on pages 49 and 50. Why is it that Kwanichi in Konjiki Yasha is the hero of his story in name only, like a puppet, and fails to have the reader understand his sadness; while on the other hand, Katai in Futon was able to bring out his hero's despair, enabling the reader to share in Tokio's experiences? Was it not because Kōyō's descriptive efforts were evenly placed in his rhetoric from start to finish? In other words, Kōyō's diction is smooth, but too monochromatic. Katai's endeavors, however, were concentrated on describing natural feelings of Tokio. It can be further noted that Katai's minute-by-minute observations of Tokio were solely carried out to convey to his readers what is taking place in Tokio's mind in situations similar to those that were affecting Kwanichi. The significance of Futon written in narrative form is that it enabled Katai to describe successfully the details of his characters as if they were living in our own world. In this respect, Katai's friends, Tōson and Doppo, at this stage of their careers, could not fully achieve the lively characterization of modern men because they, like Kōyō, failed to reveal their characters' subconscious feelings to their readers.
From a historical perspective, the significance of Futon lies in its contribution to westernizing Japanese literature, which was initiated by Shōyō in his Shōsetsu Shinzui in 1885, and followed by ​Futabatei's Ukigumo. In the case of the Kenyūsha writers, who succeeded Shōyō, their most praiseworthy qualities lie in the polish of their descriptions, and in their elegant diction, although we must concede that this phase of discipline should be in order when writing a literary work, although this is only one aspect of the efforts that are expected from a writer. The writers of the Kenyūsha were, however, primarily concerned with art and purifying processes and had taken little interest in the raw materials of life. At this juncture Katai was able to fill in the deficiencies of the Kenyūsha writers by taking preference to frank transcriptions of his experiences over a generalized and an objective presentation of a situation. In doing so Katai found in Futon a new way to narrate a story, as we have already observed in Chapter IV. Katai's narrative techniques no longer required unnatural plot devices of the traditional modes of telling a story, rather Katai made his story develop itself according to its natural sequences. As a result, these characters in Futon reflect, on their part, situations of the early period of the twentieth century of Japanese society, bringing the reader back directly into the inner lives of his characters without any interventions in the way of explanation or commentary on the part of the author, and uncovered the most intimate thoughts of his characters, those which lie nearest unconsciousness. It can be observed that Katai succeeded in Futon by describing his main character Tokio's experiences with Yoshiko, thereby bringing into focus one of the fundamental problems of our lives: the fact that ambition, sensitivity, and the striving for fulfillment which these entail, are very natural and are inhibited not by nature, but by the unnatural morals of society.
​The above literary pursuit in which Katai describes human behavior, not for the sake of "mosha," or "copying," but for the purpose of bringing out an eternal "idea," through his characters, is closely associated with the chief reason that Futabatei wrote Ukigumo using western techniques. In this sense, Katai can be regarded as the successor to Futabatei, and his Futon, following in the footsteps of Ukigumo, is an epoch-making contribution to the westernization of Japanese literature.
* ↑ Katai, Futon, chap. xi, pp. 87–88.
* ↑ Hauptmann, Einsame Menschen, Act V, p. 171.
* ↑ Ozaki Kōyō, The Gold Demon, trans. by A. and M. Lloyd, (Tokyo: Yūrakusha, 1905), pp. 207–08.