The more modern Japanese works I read, the more I see how anime ripped off of it.

Mai Hime (The Dancing Girl) - Mori Ogai

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The Quilt (Futon) - Tayama Katai

In 1903 a female admirer, Michiyo Okada (1885-1968), had written to Katai; 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 house guest 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)