This study examines the effects of the dilemma of the modern on prose works of Japanese literature. The modern emerges from the awareness of the present as radically different from the tradition, and presents a paradox for the literary artist as it brings about both an emancipation from the past and a loss of identity. The distinguishing feature of the works I examine is the intensity with which discontinuity is felt and the formal innovation that results. To provide a control for my definitions of discontinuity and modern I examine three works from the classical tradition. However, my primary focus is on narratives written between mid-Meiji and the years right after the Pacific War.

Chapter one shows how the narrative strategies employed in Genji monogatari, Hojoki, and Koshoku ichidai onna elevate the concept of ephemerality into an ideology of discontinuity. These works provide a historical context for the developments that occurred in Meiji Japan. Chapter two examines the attempt by Futabatei Shimei to create a realistic fiction and to give his writing a seriousness of purpose that would distinguish modern and traditional fiction. However, he did not want to abandon his tradition completely, and he realized that by emulating the Western novel he had to accept a sense of the modern that alienated him from his identity as a Japanese.

Chapter three focuses on the tendency of some of Futabatei's contemporaries to link a new cultural identity to the practice of literature. Self-awareness is heightened in late Meiji literature to the point that narrative perspective becomes increasingly interior and relative. The experiments of Toson, Homei, Soseki, Ogai, and Kafu extend the expression by Futabatei of the dilemma of the modern. The final chapter examines how the stress placed on the authorial voice by Meiji writers led to an increased relativism in the works of Shiga, Akutagawa, and Kajii Motojiro. The perspectivism of these authors in turn set the stage for developments in the postwar period, where the works of Mishima and Kawabata illustrate the impact of discontinuity in their shared concern with the loss of cultural memory.