In 1899, Ryūrō met Ozaki Kōyō, and joined his literary group Ken'yusha. In 1895, he published two novels which enabled him to achieve literary recognition: Hemeden and Kurotogake. These were the first of a new genre in Japanese literature, the "tragic novel", which he created. Heavily influenced by earlier Edo period gesaku writing, his stories are filled with improbable or incredible events, melodrama, romanticism and rather wooden characterization. His plots are typified by an inexorable progression of the protagonist through a series of pathetic and wretched experiences towards destruction dictated by an inflexible fate. His most famous work, Imado Shinju (Suicide at Imado), was published in 1896.

Ryūrō retired from writing in 1908, and died of a heart attack in 1928. His grave is at the Yanaka Cemetery in Tokyo. The writer Hirotsu Kazuo is his son. (Wikipedia) Edit Biography