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bloodthirsty cruelty or else of pornography are welcomed, and very few readers even cast so much as a glance at works of a more serious nature.”
Tsubouchi claimed that the artistic novel, his second category, was no longer being written in Japan. The purpose of the artistic novel, he said, was to bring pleasure to cultivated men through a criticism of society. Because European novels belong to this category, they are read even by the greatest men abroad. “However,” he wrote, “in Japan it has been customary to consider the novel a mere plaything. Japanese authors are resigned to this situation, and none of them has thought of how he might improve his novels and make them works of art capable of bringing pleasure to mature, cultivated men. Comparing the novels and romances written in our country with those of the West is like comparing an ukiyoe print with a landscape in oils by a master. The print is not necessarily clumsy in its execution, but lacking as it does the qualities of refinement which might satisfy cultivated minds, it serves merely to amuse women and children.”
Tsubouchi proposed various changes in the Japanese novel which might enable them to attain the level of those written in Europe. The most impor-
