Kunikida Doppo's literary life was short. It lasted only ten years or so. His literary development can be devided into following three stages. 1) Stage of romantic lyric poems which often describe pastoral nature (1894~1901). 2) Stage shifting to a na...
Kunikida Doppo's literary life was short. It lasted only ten years or so. His literary development can be devided into following three stages. 1) Stage of romantic lyric poems which often describe pastoral nature (1894~1901). 2) Stage shifting to a naturalism or realism (1902~1905). 3) Stage of naturalism(1906~1908).
Works of the third stage are characterized as below. First, mood of the works seem to be corelated with the intellectuals' mood at that time, which is called a state of nil admirari. Second, typical themes he picked up are such as miserably isolated life and fruitless life. "Take no Kiod(竹の木戶)" (Bamboo Gate, 1908) and "Nirojin"(Two Elderly men, 1908); most important works of his later years, can be regarded as outcomes of these two elements mentioned before. However, they are not fully naturalism literatures because of a shortness of his understanding on the first element. In this sense, they have different relish from the works of Masamune Hakucho(正宗白島), Tokuda Shusei(德田秋聲) and so on. After all, it is not difficult to point out some literary limitation he faced on.
Despite the drawback mentioned before, his intellectual technic to deal with the motif gave a strong influence on Masamune Hakucho, Mayama Seika and so on. This technic, eventually, led him to be an excellent short story writer and gave a way to form a naturalism literature in modern Japan. In this sense, Kunikida Doppo was a writer who built a bridge between Kitamura Tokoku(北村透谷) and Tayama Katai(田山花袋). He was a predecessor of naturalism literature, and most probably it owes to his aspects and sensibility towards things as well as the technic describing them.