Tayama Katai

Katai Tayama (田山 花袋 Tayama Katai, 22 January 1872 – 13 May 1930, born Tayama Rokuya) was a Japanese author. His most famous works include Inaka Kyōshi (田舎教師, "Rural Teacher," also translated "Country Teacher") and Futon (蒲団, also translated "The Quilt"). He is noted for establishing the Japanese literary genre of naturalistic I novels which revolve around the detailed self-examinations of an introspective author. He also wrote about his experiences in the Russo-Japanese War.

He was born in Tatebayashi, Gunma Prefecture, into a shizoku (i.e. former samurai) family, at the time of the abolition of the privileges of that rank. His father entered the police force to support the household and was killed in April 1877 during the Satsuma Rebellion. Katai was sent with his elder brother and sister to Tokyo, where he entered a bookshop as an apprentice, but he lost his position and returned to Tatebayashi in 1882.

The whole family moved to Tokyo in 1886, and Tayama attended the poetry classes of Matsuura Tatsuo (Hagitsubo, 1844-1909) before appealing to Kōyō Ozaki in 1891 for help in beginning a literary career; he soon fell out with Ozaki however, and it was Suiin Emi who helped Tayama establish himself as a travel writer. He joined the Bungakukai group in 1896, and became friends with Kunikida Doppo, who introduced him to the works of Western writers such as Guy Maupassant, by which he was profoundly influenced. Tayama married in February 1899; his mother died in August, and in September he joined the staff of the newspaper Hakubunkan. In 1902 he achieved his first success with Jūemon no saigo, which was inspired by Hermann Sudermann's Katzensteg. In 1904 he was sent to Manchuria as a war correspondent. This experience led him to write stories such as Ippeisotsu ("One Soldier", 1908).

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