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Japan

Author · Japan

Tayama Katai

Died in 1930

Tayama Rokuya, known as Tayama Katai, was born on 22 January 1872 in Tatebayashi, into a samurai family. His first writings were romantic, and he made his name with travel narratives, before turning, in an essay of 1904, towards a plain description without ornament, under the influence of the French naturalists, including Guy de Maupassant. A trilogy drawn from his own life, from 1908 to 1910, fixed the form of Japanese naturalism, and in 1911 he theorised “flat description”. He died in Tokyo on 13 May 1930.

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