In 1903 a female admirer , Michiyo Okada ( 1885-1968 ) , had written to him ; apparently influenced by Gerhart Hauptmann 's play '' Einsame Menschen '' , Tayama gave the fan permission to come to Tokyo as a literary pupil . She arrived in February 1904 , but was a houseguest for only a month before he left for Manchuria on 23 March ; after his return on 20 September , she moved back in , and stayed until January 1906 . He did not begin an affair , but used the romantic tension as material for his most ambitious work yet , '' Futon '' ( 1907 ) , which made his name as a writer , and established the Japanese literary genre known as the I Novel &mdash; although in fact '' Futon '' is largely recounted in the third person . ( In January 1909 , Okada was disinherited by her family , and Tayama adopted her as a daughter . ) In 1907 he embarked instead on an affair with a geisha named Yone Iida ( 1889 - ? ) ; this experience was unhappy , and punctuated by the deaths of friends and family members , with the result that his later works take on an obscure , pessimistic and religious tone . After the Great Kantō earthquake , Katai provided Iida with a place to stay because her house was destroyed in the disaster . This period of his relationship is covered in the novel '' One Hundred Nights '' ( '' Momoyo '' , 1927 ) . He continued to write until his death from throat cancer in 1930
Great Kantō earthquake
1923 Great Kantō earthquake
Katai Tayama