(born April 4, 1864, Edo, Japan—died May 10, 1909, at sea in Bay of Bengal) Japanese novelist and translator. He is best known for Ukigumo (1887–89; “The Drifting Clouds”), his first novel, and for his translations of stories by Ivan Turgenev.
In these he used a style called gembun itchi (“unification of spoken and written language”), one of the first attempts at a modern colloquial idiom. His later works include the novels An Adopted Husband (1906) and Mediocrity (1907). He is credited with bringing modern realism to the Japanese novel.
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