The purpose of the present article is to bring to light the qualities of OZAKI Koyo (1867-1903) as a writer through his three works adapted from “Decameron” by Boccaccio.

　1.Koyo as Story Writer — “Taka-ryori” (“A Dish of Falcon Meat”) (1895)

　The work is an adaptation from the 9th story of the 5th day of ”Decameron”. When we compare the adaptation with the original work, we find that, on the characterization of persons and the atmosphere in the story, Koyo has transferred the western character of the persons in the original work to Japanese characters, and rearranged the implications of the original story vividly in the traditional, feudal world of Japan. This is a good evidence of Koyo’s quality to be a successful story writer on the plot and the representation of a story, irrespective of the fact that Koyo somewhat disregarded the thought of the original writer and the morality maintained in the original work.

　2. Koyo as Man of Humour — “San-ga-jo” (“Three Articles”) (1895)

　The work is an adaptation from the 5th story (the first half) of the 7th day of“Decameron”. The representation in Koyo’s work surpasses the original particularly on its humourousness and reality in several scenes when the wife plays tricks on her aged husband because of her love for a young, handsome servant. Though the humourousness is what depends solely on the cleverness of remarks and is not genuine humour, we might say that Koyo is a dexterous man of humour, according to the definition of ‘humour’（or ‘humourousness’）in his days, when it implied to ‘crack jokes’ or to ‘continue joking to the last.’

　3. Koyo, A Realist ? A Stylist? ― “Rei-netsu” (“The Shifts of Love”) (1894)

　The work is an adaptation of the 7th story of the 8th day of “Decameron”, but it is left unfinished. Borrowing the plot of the story from the original, Koyo enlarged it and adapted it, and he attempted to describe the psychological process of the characters in a colloquial style, which was a new attempt on style at the time. This shows, together with “Tonari-no-onna” (“The Woman Next Door”)，his another adapted work from a short story of Zola’s, that Koyo experimented a precise psychological description as that of a Zola’s.

　At the same time the work foretells the appearance of a superb psychological description and a mellowed colloquial style in “Tajo-takon” (“Tears and Regrets”)，one of Koyo’s master works in the later period. But the impression “The Shifts of Love” gives us is, as a whole, still that of the conventional, humane world since Edo era, and there is none that is novel. The reason is because Koyo’s experiment is confined to the art of style only, and, more, he was not equipped at the time with a literary outlook to absorb modem western realizm. Therefore, we might by appearance take Koyo for a ‘realist’，but we ought to consider him essentially to be a‘stylist’.

　In all cases, the three adapted stories by Koyo from “Decameron” in the years 1894 and 1895 testify plainly the qualities and the limitations as well of OZAKI Koyo as a writer, and these adapted stories are worthy of regard in that they contained his elements which were to be sublimated in his master works in the later period.

　Shoyo Tsubouchi, known as a builder of a milestone in the history of modern Japanese literature, was as greatly concerned with innovation of comic writings as with propounding of realistic theory. In his Essence of the Novel, the first full-length theory of the novel in Japan published in 1885, Tsubouchi expounded what a true comedy should be like, comparing with Dickens’s Pickwick Papers the popular comic novels of the Edo period such as Jippensha Ikku’s Hizakurige(Shanks’s Mare) and Kinga’s Shichihenjin (The Seven Eccentrics). What he found wrong with these novels was their frequent resort to obscenity and scatology as means of provoking laughter. Laughter in literature should not betake itself to such vain vulgarity, but must be such a decent one as endowed with sympathy, kindness, and pity. Here we see that he was resorting as an antidote against what he called “obscene comedy” to the sentimental humor which was represented by Carlyle and flourishing through Dickens and Thackery. But Tsubouchi’s own theory of wit and humour had not been proposed until he wrote an article on the subject three years later than The Essence of the Novel. From every point of view this unfinished article on “The Distinction of Wit and Humour” in The Senmongakkai Zasshi, No. 2 is obviously based upon Sydney Smiths lectures “On Wit and Humour” which were widely read and quoted for a quarter of a century since its posthumous publication in 1850. And this was the first introduction to Japan of the theory of humour based upon incongruity developed ever since Aristotle and represented in England by Coleridge.

　Around the end of the Meiji era, Scandinavian writers such as Ibsen and Björson were introduced into Japan. Alexander Lange Kielland (1849-1906), one of the eminent writers of Norway, was introduced by Seiu Hashimoto. His “The Old Raven” was published in “Teikoku Bungaku” in 1906 (Meiji 37).

　In the following years, some of Kielland’s stories appeared in other literary magazines, such as “Bunshō Sekai”, mainly translated by Akira Maeda.

　It can be said that Riichi Yokomitsu submitted his practice pieces to “Bunshō Sekai” when he was a high-school student. He was an earnest reader of this literary magazine. It has also been said that he was fond of reading Kielland’s “Novelletter”by Akira Maeda. He often referred to Kielland in his essays.

　Sei Ito found a similarity between “Haru wa basha ni notte” and “Haabet er lysegrφnt”（“Kibō wa shigatsu midori no koromo o kite”,） one of the short stories in the “Novelletter”.

　My comparative study of these two stories establishes that the imagery of the title of the former seems to have been influenced by the latter. Reading other short stories in the “Novelletter” establishes other similarities between Yokomitsu and Kielland. One similarity is in the formal structure of Kielland’s work. “Haru wa basha ni notte”，which was influenced to some degree by the “Novelletter”，shows a similar structure.

　It can be said that this structure is the chief reason for the success of this autobiographical story.