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.

　叙事詩『失楽園』の作者ジョン・ミルトンと言えば、叙事詩人としてはギリシャのホメーロス、ローマのウェルギリウスに比せられ、宗教詩人としては、カトリックを代表するイタリヤのダンテに対抗して、プロテスタントないしは清教徒を代表する大詩人である。またイギリス文学の領域内では、古来、シェイクスピアに伍し、あるいは少くとも彼に次ぐ詩人としての地位はゆるがなかったと言える。

　ところが、これほどの大詩人ではあるが、わが国への紹介のされ方、わが国の文学に及ぼした影響といぅことになると、きわめて特色ある様相を呈している。一言にして言えば、その原因は、ミルトンが日本人のあいだに、芸術的な共感者を広範囲につくり出せなかったということにあるといえる。おそらくミルトンが踏まえているギリシャ・ラテンの古典やへブライの宗教ないしはキリスト教の素養が平均的日本人には乏しかったこと、ミルトンの宗教思想が十九世紀の西欧唯物思想の洗礼を受けた人々にはなじみがたいものであったことなどがその主要な原因であったのではないかと思われる。それゆえ他の泰西の大文学の紹介導入に比べて、ミルトンの紹介導入が始まる年代はきわめておそい。

　だが、一方で芸術作品として敬遠されたのは事実であるが、その反面、その宗教性ないしは政治性のゆえに、ミルトンの作品を強く愛するという傾向の人が生まれてくる。従って、特に初期においては、その紹介者の中に、プロテスタントの信仰に立つ人、あるいはその影響を受けた人―そういう人は当時政治に関心を持つ場合が多かった―が多いのである。徳富蘇峯とか、内村鑑三門下の藤井武、畔上賢造、矢内原忠雄といった人たち、あるいは帆足理一郎などがミルトン導入に関して果した役割が注目される。英文学者はといえば、繁野天来をはじめ、クリスチャンではない有力な学者ももちろん存在するけれども、その反面、斎藤勇、竹友藻風、岩橋武夫、平井正穂、越智文雄といったプロテスタントの名がめだつ。若い世代でも代表的な学者の中に、新井明、藤井治彦、斎藤和明、道家弘一郎の諸氏の名が見える。なお今日ではプロテスタンティズムの信仰とは切り離された政治的・社会科学的関心から、ミルトンの芸術にも関心を抱く人が出始めている。ミルトンの政治思想の中に、今日の問題である民衆の抵抗権や革命権の先駆を見る人たちや、ピューリタン革命のマルキシズム的意義から出発する人たちである。

　もっとも、ミルトンに対する芸術的共感がわが国ではまったく生まれなかったわけではない。飜案としては、島崎藤村の『草枕』(一八九四)や入江花錦の『呪阻の焰』(一九〇五)がある。しかしミルトンの影響下に書かれた創作ということになると、先ず第一に、書斎の人であって文壇とは無縁であった湯浅半月があげられることになる。『十二の石塚』(一八八五)やその改作『古英雄』は、ミルトンの『失楽園』から学んだ叙事詩の作法を踏まえて書いてある。単に着想や思想だけでなく、その叙事詩的表現にもミルトンの模倣と思われる個所がある、『半月集』(一九〇二)所収の『天地初発』にも『神子と魔王』にもミルトンの影響は見られるが、特に後者は、『復楽園』から多大のヒントを得ているものであろう。半月のほかには、これまた文壇とは縁のない無教会主義の布教者藤井武の一万二千九百五十行に及ぶ長詩『羔の婚姻』がミルトンの影響を各所に受けている。だが、この他となると、ミルトンから大きな影響を受けた作品を日本文学からさがし出すことは困難であろう。竹友藻風は薄田泣菫の「葛城の神」や「鶲の歌」に若干の影響を認めてはいるけれども。

　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.