The history of modern Japanese literature begins with translation in more than one sense. The Meiji era was characterized by calls for reform in virtually every arena of Japanese life; language and women were especially prominent targets for change. Futabatei Shimei was the first to attempt translating modern Western fiction into vernacular Japanese, and one of the first to try composing original fiction in vernacular Japanese. In translating vernacular Russian fiction, Futabatei abandoned the preexisting styles of kanbun-kundoku, instead seeking to forge a new style that would convey the form, content, and vernacular nature of the original texts. Osei is a talker and natural-born mimic, whereas Bunzo is a thinker who sees everything in terms of written texts. The ever-widening gap between the two, when read as the failed betrothal of speech and writing, emerges as a powerful metanarrative on the essential dilemmas of vernacularization in modern Japanese literature.