Tokuda Shusei was an important Japanese writer from the turn of the twentieth century until his death in 1943. The history of the modern urbanization of Japan is that of many people whose lives were uprooted, and perhaps no other prewar Japanese writer has so faithfully and realistically portrayed the sheer chaos, indeterminacy, and breathless excitement that characterized this urbanization.

Any consideration of the history of the modern Japanese novel has to acknowledge Shusei's literary career for at least three reasons. First, an examination of how Shusei's narrative prose developed during his long career provides a stylistic history of the novel in modern Japan before World War II. Lacking affiliations with political, religious, or educational institutions for almost fifty years, Shusei survived as a professional novelist. Supporting himself and a large family of at times eight dependents almost solely on the income he earned from writing fiction required that...