“No one with a brain in his head can stand here in the centre of the intellectual world and be indifferent to the violent upheavals going on before his eyes. We young men are the ones who hold today’s literary power in our hands, so we have to take the initiative to make every word, every phrase, count. The literary world is undergoing a spectacular revolution. Everything is moving in a new direction, and we must not be left behind. We have to make the new trends go the way we want them to, or it’s not worth being alive. The way they throw the word ‘literature’ around, you’d think it was garbage, but that’s just the ‘literature’ you hear about in places like the University. The new literature will have to influence the movement of the whole of Japanese society.”
Sōseki Natsume, “Sanshirō”, 1908-9.
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