New-York tribune., 1919-07-26


ShitneL Translated by B. Mitsiu and
Gregg NJ. Sinclair. Published by Alfred
\. knopi.
With "An Adopted Husband" ("Sono
Omakage"), by Futabatei Shimei, trans
lated by B. Mitsiu and Gregg Nj. Sin
clair, japanese literature comes out Of
its dolls house, overturning the deli
cately balanced objets dart, smashing
the quantity painted rice paper screens
and scattering the cherry blossoms.
This first novel to come out of modern
Japan strides the debris with the
stature Of great art and the gesture
of lie. 1t is not the pretty painted
ware with which Japan so obligingly
soothes the Western craving for the
exotic. 1t is q vigorous, upthrusting
expression that reaches out and
merges with the restless current of
the modern world.
Futabatei Shimei, the author of this
novel, introduced Russian literature
into Japan, and the impress of the
Russians is strong on this novel 1t
is filled with the same searching for
realism, the same psychological prob
ing and the same willingness to face
the lncompleteness of life.
AN Adopted Husband" presents
vividly the feverish, industrialized,
story is rooted in an essentially naive
and local situation. The Ono family
have taken into their midst a needy
but brilliant young student, harboring
him through the period of his educa-
ton, under an ancient and honorable
arrangement in Japan, until he should
be able to repay them by marrying
their daughter. Tetsuya Ono has full
lilled his part of the contract and mar
ried their vulgar and stupid daughter,
but in the years that have passed he
has not fulfilled the brilliant promise
of his youth The unworldliness
which has made him singularly the
prey of such an arrangement has also
kept him from coping with the world
on its own terms. The continued bur-
den of his households needs. the con-
seriousness of his failure to satisfy the
morose old mother and his grasping
wife, have brought him at the opening
of the story to worn and dispirited
middle age. His household also in
cludes young half-sister of his wifes,
the illegitimate child of his father-in-
lazy, unhappy and sensitive like him
self, and between the two there flow
ers 4 love affair. The relation be-
tween the two, the deep and tender
pity that underlies 1t, the impulse it
gets from the sordid life around them,
is strongly and subtly portrayed. But
their attempt to pull themselves free
from the life around them is crushed
by the hard, material considerations
which conspre to hold Tetsuya help
lcssly enchained to the debt of graft
tude contracted in his youth The
girl, beset by the weight Of her moral
transgression, is urged by her Chris
tian faith to abnegation. In the end
the moral forces cluim barren vic
tory. Tetsuya wrecks himself with
drink.
There are only five characters in
the book-the mother, the wife, the
successful materalistic friend, the
girl, with something austere in her
passion, and Tetsuya, greatly human
figure caught in the desperate struggle
to reconcile apparent truth with
deeper truth. "An Adopted Husband"
is sombre and courageous and filled
with a passionate sense of the sane
tity of human emotivn. And it accom-
plishes the great and civilizing func-
tion of all art, in that it reatfirms the
universal quality of life. R. D.