Shiga Naoya - At Kinosaki

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never attempted to draw a line between story novels and non-fiction essays. He described his main function as a writer was to select, set and arrange materials into a story. If we look at the first sentence of the novel "I had been hit by a train on the Tokyo loop line and I went alone to Kinosaki hot spring to convalesce" we can immediately recognize his 'matter of fact' style of writing. He so efficiently sets up a story's entire background in one sentence with nothing but simple fact. Tanizaki Junichiro refers to this as Shiga's 'practicality' (jitsuyo), which Tanizaki writes is quite rare in Japanese prose. One of the features of Shiga's writing the reader notices very quickly is his short sentences, which is an integral part of this 'practicality'
The second sentence immediately following this background setting sentence is an equally efficient sentence in introducing the story's theme of death and the attitude of the narrator towards it. It is another example of ...

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writes: "The Naturalists rejected all the ideals of a former age and sought to renounce empty lies, eschew all decoration, scrutinize the self, and make earnest confession of what they found".
Having said Shiga's style is 'matter of fact' and 'to the point', in no way is his writing simple. Shiga writes clear descriptions of the nature and scenery around him while at the same time focusing in on the object of his thinking with an almost eerie amount of detail. In the first of such descriptions, we can see an example of this. When describing the road that he often strolled on before dinner in the evenings, he explains how he sometimes looked into the stream under the road: ...

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