Tayama Katai

(pen name of Tayama Rokuya). Born Dec. 13, 1871, in Tatebayashi, Gumma Prefecture; died May 13, 1930. Japanese writer.

Tayama’s first works were romantic lyrics, published in the collection Lyric Poetry (1897). In the article “The Plain Picture” (1904), he established the principles of Japanese naturalism. His novella The Bed (1907) inaugurated the genre of autobiographical fiction (watakushi shosetsu) in Japanese literature. Tayama’s novels Life (1908), The Wife (1908), and Family Ties (1910) constituted a detailed description of the author’s inner world. Tayama’s best works are strongly realistic, for example, the novella The Village Teacher (1908). The short story “The Private” (1908; Russian translation, 1958) is antimilitarist. Tayama also wrote the historical novels The Miracle of a Certain Monk (1917) and Minamoto Yoshitomo (1924), which were influenced by religious ideology.