From the novels of Ben Lerner to Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy (2014–2018) and Karl Ove Knausgaard’s multi-volume
My Struggle (2009–2011), some of the most eye-catching literary fiction of recent years has been heavily autobiographical. The prototype of the modern autobiographical novel is generally considered to be Marcel Proust’s
In Search of Lost Time (1913–1927). What is less widely known, here in the West, is that a very similar kind of novel came to prominence in early twentieth-century Japan. In 1907, a few years before the first volume of Proust’s opus saw the light of day, Katai Tayama published
Futon, an autobiographical novella inspired by his unconsummated relationship with a female admirer and protégé. In 1912 Naoya Shiga published