| Shūsei Tokuda | |
| Birth Date: | 1 February 1872 |
| Birth Place: | Kanazawa, Ishikawa, Japan |
| Death Place: | Tokyo, Japan |
| Occupation: | Writer |
| Movement: | Naturalism |
was a Japanese writer.
Tokuda was born in Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture.[1] Coming from a family of the former feudal nobility, Tokuda began his literary life as a follower of the writer Ozaki Kōyō, who was four years his senior and had already established himself as a literary man in the late 1880s. Their relationship wasn't to last long, though, with Kōyō dying in 1903, after which Tokuda began to move from Kōyō's style of romanticism into a mixture of naturalism and the confessional known as "Shizen-shugi", an example of which is his 1908 novel Arajotai (新世帯), which dealt with the frustrations of a young working-class couple.
After the publication of Ashiato (足迹) in 1910, Tokuda would release his most autobiographical work, Kabi (黴), in 1911, a classic example of the Japanese genre known as the "I-novel". He followed with the novel Rough Living (Arakure, あらくれ) in 1915.
After the death of his wife in 1926, Tokuda began a series of relationships with younger women, which would inspire his later works, especially his best-known, Kasō jinbutsu (仮装人物), released from 1935 to 1938, as well as the unfinished Shukuzu (縮図) from 1941.
A number of Tokuda's works were adapted into films in Japan.[2] A monument honoring Tokuda was erected near the summit of Mount Utatsu in 1947. The monument features writing authored by poet Murō Saisei and was designed by architect Yoshirō Taniguchi.