ABSTRACT
OVER THE YEARS, both Japanese and foreign scholars have speculated about the significance of the often complex personal relationships among modern Japanese writers. These connections sometimes determined their individual artistic trajectories and, more often than not, helped shape important developments in their personal lives as well. It has therefore always surprised me that the two figures now regarded as the literary masters of the Meiji period (1868–1911), Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916) and Mori Ōgai (1862–1922), could be said to have remained virtually unacquainted. It is true that Ōgai was older by a few years and had gone to Europe a generation earlier than Sōseki did, but nevertheless the respective prominence of both men should surely, in the natural course of events, have put them together. Or so I supposed.
