Tokai Sanshi

Shiba Shirō (柴四郎), better known for his pen name Tōkai Sanshi (東海散士, Wanderer of the Eastern Sea), (21 June 1852 – 13 December 1922) was a political activist and novelist during the Meiji period.

After a period spent in captivity, Shiba studied at Toogijuku, a private academy in Hirosaki that trained talented young man for government service and attracted many former samurai from the northeastern domain.

He supported the establishment of Tobokyokai (東邦協会), an organization that attracted people who advocate Nanshin-ron (南進論), Pan-Asianism, and economic independence in 1891, and took up responsibilities in Rikkenkakushinto (立憲革新党) in 1984.

Strange Encounters with Beautiful Women (Kajin no Kigū,『佳人之奇遇』) is Tokai Sanshi's most famous work, serialized between 1885 and 1897[9] it became one of Japan's most popular political novels (seijishousetsu,政治小説).

Oppressed by the old-time political organization, many of the thinking people of Meiji yearned for objectives which perhaps they could not fully comprehend, but which they knew of and wanted because they linked them with the new and wonderful West—independence, freedom, equal rights.

Political novels were: “Often set in foreign countries or ancient times, with an exotic cast of romantic or heroic characters, and written in a melodramatic and bombastic style,…[and] were popular among the young.

"[11] Strange Encounters with Beautiful Women was written in a traditional sinified Japanese style (kanbun 漢文), which included Chinese poems called kanshi (漢詩).

The story begins in Philadelphia, where the protagonist, while gazing upon the Liberty Bell and Declaration of Independence, runs into two beautiful women, one from Ireland and the other from Spain, whose names Kōren and Yūran, though decidedly Chinese, can be interpreted as Colleen and Yolanda.

After reflecting yet more on the patriotic struggles of the American people during the Revolutionary War and hearing the plight of the Irish from Colleen, Tōkai falls in love with her and embarks on a series of international adventures sometimes with her and sometimes without.

Horace Feldman comments on the popularity of Kajin no Kigū during the age of its publication: “In sentence style it is adjudged by the Japanese to be the best among the political novels, possibly because it conforms to the old traditions.

They gave an enthusiastic reception to this compromise between a Western subject, on the one hand, and Chinese style, on the other.”[10] Kajin no Kigū, in spite of its socially conscious and politically progressive topics, is written a very pre-modern format.