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Paper short abstract

This paper explores the mountain as a motif in modern Japanese literature amid rapid modernization. Focusing on works by Kitamura Tōkoku and Shimazaki Tōson, it traces shifts from romantic idealization to lived experience, revealing how mountains offered alternatives to urban modernity.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines the significance of the mountain as a literary motif in modern Japanese literature against the backdrop of rapid social and cultural transformation in the late 19th and early 20th century. Industrialization and modernization fostered an urban-centered culture, with Tokyo emerging as a political, economic, and educational hub. While the city initially embodied opportunity and progress—encapsulated in the ideal of risshin shusse (social advancement)—it soon came to be associated with alienation and emotional disillusionment, particularly among young intellectuals. In this context, the mountain, a recurring motif in Japanese literature with diverse forms and meanings, re-emerged with renewed symbolic force.

Situating the discussion within this cultural framework, the paper analyzes the mountain as a literary topos in the works of Kitamura Tōkoku and Shimazaki Tōson. Tōkoku, a leading figure of early Japanese Romanticism, employs the mountain symbolically in his dramatic poem The Mountain of Hōrai (1891), weaving together traditional mythology and Romantic ideals. In his work, the mountain represents individual aspiration and longing for an ideal, set in contrast to the constraints imposed by modern society.

While Tōkoku’s early death prevented the further development of this symbolism, his close associate Tōson—who shared many of his intellectual concerns—later underwent a significant transformation from Romantic poet to Naturalist novelist. Significantly, the mountain plays a central role in works from the early stages of this transition, most notably The Sketches of the Chikumagawa (1911). Drawing on his own experiences of life in mountainous regions, Tōson depicts the mountain not as an abstract ideal but as an alternative reality grounded in lived experience.

By comparing these two representative works of modern Japanese literature, and by attending to both Japanese and foreign literary influences, this paper aims to elucidate the multiple modes through which the mountain functions within the cultural and intellectual landscape of modernizing Japan.