Between the Meiji and Shōwa eras there is an essential change in the way literary authorship is conceptualized, that is patently visible in biographical narratives of modern authors. A good term of comparison for these biographical narratives are memorializations of Meiji authors that are generally centered around relationships of personal acquaintance, and emphasize master and disciple networks, and the tightly knit communities around coterie journals and other similar venues for and by writers. By contrast, Taishō biographies of writers emphasize the value of their objects’ lives as models, if not always for behavior, very often for a modern artistic sensibility that the public could participate in through their life and work. Taishō biographers, often aspiring authors themselves, argue their suitability to present the lives of their objects to the public, not because they were present in the private moments of the biography’s subjects, but because they shared with them a unique artistic sensibility through a certain fraternity of artists beyond personal connections. These features point to a conception of authorship based around individual sensibility and creativity that would supersede the relationships of mentorship and patronage that had dominated the literary world in the Meiji era.

Between the Meiji and Shōwa eras there is an essential change in the way literary authorship is conceptualized, that is patently visible in biographical narratives of modern authors. A good term of comparison for these biographical narratives are memorializations of Meiji authors that are generally centered around relationships of personal acquaintance, and emphasize master and disciple networks, and the tightly knit communities around coterie journals and other similar venues for and by writers. By contrast, Taishō biographies of writers emphasize the value of their objects’ lives as models, if not always for behavior, very often for a modern artistic sensibility that the public could participate in through their life and work. Taishō biographers, often aspiring authors themselves, argue their suitability to present the lives of their objects to the public, not because they were present in the private moments of the biography’s subjects, but because they shared with them a unique artistic sensibility through a certain fraternity of artists beyond personal connections. These features point to a conception of authorship based around individual sensibility and creativity that would supersede the relationships of mentorship and patronage that had dominated the literary world in the Meiji era.

Author Okamoto Kanoko (1889-1939) shared with many of her contemporaries a deep interest in the connections between mental abnormality and artistic creativity. Okamoto herself had first-hand experience of internment in a facility for mental patients, but her essays and autobiographical writings rarely mention this episode, and certainly do not exploit it in the creation of her artistic persona. Gendered attitudes towards mental health probably lie at the root of this difference: a female writer like Okamoto would pay a much steeper price in her public image if she flirted with motifs of mental abnormality in her personal branding.In her fiction, on the other hand, I identify a common pattern in which mental illness occupies a central place in the process of artistic creation, but always split into two different characters whose relationship becomes the center of the story. One of the characters then experiences these pathological states vicariously through the other and derives their creativity at least partly from them, participating in the genealogy of the “mad artist” but without necessarily displaying the full effects of mental illness. It is possible to assume that, having had first-hand experience of mental illness herself, Okamoto would not be so cavalier about its consequences.